Looking at Wednesday’s signees — including junior college and prep school athletes — here’s a snapshot of the talent produced by the state of Florida in 2013 (as graded by Rivals.com):

5-stars = 5

4-stars = 47

3- stars = 168

Total 3+ stars = 220

Here’s where the state’s 10 highest-ranked players are headed:

Florida = 2

Florida State = 2

Alabama = 1

Clemson = 1

Notre Dame = 1

Ohio State = 1

Ole Miss = 1

Southern Cal = 1

Loyalty:  Only four of the state’s 10 best players will suit up for Sunshine State schools next season.  With so many in-state schools to pick from that number’s a bit low.  Six different schools made successful raids for the state’s best prospects.  Will Muschamp and Jimbo Fisher can’t be too pleased about that.

It looks like Auburn’s attempt to sway Tarean Folston away from his commitment to Notre Dame has come up short.

The running back from Cocoa (Fla.) High School received a visit Wednesday from two Notre Dame assistants. That meeting “absolutely” convinced Folston to sign with Notre Dame, Cocoa coach John Wilkinson told IrishIllustrated.com.

“The blend of academics and athletics, the obviously value of the Notre Dame education,” Wilkins said. “Beyond football the networking there is huge and (Folston) understands that. When you make a decision, sometimes you have to reaffirm, go and look at something else.”

Folston looked strongly at Auburn when he visited The Plains on Jan. 18. But it looks like Notre Dame, which received Folston’s commitment on Jan. 2, will win this battle.

That will likely cause Auburn to turn its attention more strongly to New Hope, Ala., running back Johnathan Ford, who visited Auburn last weekend and received an in-home visit from head coach Gus Malzahn earlier this week.

Ford, who decommitted from Vanderbilt earlier this week, has also visited Tennessee and recently received scholarship offers from Georgia and Florida State. Ford could make a return trip to Auburn for an unofficial visit this weekend, according to AuburnSports.com.

Auburn has also made a recent push for Nashville, Tenn., athlete Cornelius Elder, who decided to make a mid-week visit to Auburn. Elder has also expressed an interest in playing basketball in college.

There isn’t a whole heckuva lot to say about this one.  The Alabama Crimson Tide — long ago known as the Red Elephants — won the BCS Championship Game on January 7th over Notre Dame.  It was Bama’s second title in a row and third in four years.

Yesterday, the Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Circus arrived in Birmingham for four days of performances.  Eight of the circus’ elephants were decked out in Alabama gear — including a massive houndstooth hat on one — and marched through the city’s streets as a salute to Tide football (and as one great big commercial for the circus).

Yesterday I was stuck in my car from about 3:30 in the afternoon to 7:30 at night.  Thanks to a surprise snow storm — and the fact that many of us Southerners can’t drive in the stuff — what should have been a 30-minute drive home turned into a four-hour nightmare.  Trust me, I’ll never watch “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” the same way again.

While trapped in my car and creeping along slower than your average snail, I went up and down my Sirius/XM dial (free plug).  ESPN radio.  CNN radio.  FOX news radio.  On all of those stations, the Manti Te’o story popped up.  Then it popped up again.  And again.  Even more than the already overblown Lance Armstrong story.  Much more than any actual news.

A quick Google search this morning provides these Te’o reports:

Notre Dame: Football Star was “Catfished” in Girlfriend Hoax

Does Te’o Suffer from the “Delusional Disease”?

Te’o's Fake Girlfriend may have Duped Others

9 Baffling Questions in Te’o Girlfriend Hoax

Seriously, people, what the Hell?

The story of Te’o's made-up girlfriend has become our latest national obsession.  Apparently no pretty blonde woman has disappeared this week.  No public figure has had an affair.  The press has time to fill and a human-interest-story-gone-weird has become the perfect filler.

Too bad it’s the press — and, yes, this writer is a member of the press, too — that deserves the scorn over this one.  Sure Te’o and Notre Dame should have come clean sooner, but was the player running for office?  Did he divulge America’s secret nuke codes to the North Koreans?  Apparently he lied about having a girlfriend.  At best he was duped by a hoaxer and didn’t fess up quickly.  At worst he played the press for sympathy and publicity.  Newsflash: He ain’t the first.

Read the rest of this entry »

SEC Football

1.  Someone’s put together a pretty slick infographic for Alabama’s BCS title game win over Notre Dame.

2.  This writer believes kids have a right to do some waffling when it comes to their commitments.  (Agreed… so long as it’s not just done for attention in this made-for-ESPN age.)

3.  New AD Eric Hyman is reviewing Kevin Sumlin’s first year at Texas A&M and it could mean some more greenbacks for the coach.

4.  Kliff Kingsbury is taking Aggie linebackers coach Matt Wallerstedt with him to Texas Tech as the Red Raiders’ new defensive coordinator.

5.  New assistant Steve Stripling will be Tennessee’s sixth defensive line in as many years.

6.  Here they are – the most memorable moments of the 2012 SEC football season.

SEC Basketball

7.  The SEC has named its Players of the Week.

8.  There were a number of ugly records set during Arkansas’ 56-33 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday.

9.  Once more depth is an issue for the LSU basketball program…

10.  But the Tigers “aren’t concerned” about their recent shooting woes.

11.  Mississippi State “got a monkey off (their) backs” with a road win on Saturday.

12.  Ole Miss is a different team with a different chemistry this year.

13.  Tennessee freshman Armani Moore is angling for more playing time.

14.  Vanderbilt could be without leading scorer Kedren Johnson tomorrow against Ole Miss due to a partial dislocation of his shoulder.

Extras

15.  Four NFL teams have made a run at Jon Gruden.  (Has any coach ever aided his resume more without actually coaching?)

16.  Expect “shameful” coaches’ salaries to keep right on rising.  (Got to keep on rising.)

17.  The Sporting News ranked four SEC stories among the 10 worst for the 2012 college football season.  (Question: How can a kid being paralyzed on the field rank as less horrible than the Bobby Petrino scandal?  Ridiculous.)

18.  The Big Ten might just rename its Legends and Leaders divisions.  (Two years too late.)

Since the Big Ten uncorked the bottle holding the conference realignment genie back in November, rumors of more massive changes to come have been spreading across the country.  Fans enjoy the “fantasy league” nature of the discussion.  People in industries connected to college sports (television, athletic equipment suppliers, agencies holding media rights) simply accept that their world is in for more change.  While several of the folks we’ve spoken to in various SEC athletic departments seem to dread the next round of shuffling.

Count us among those who’d like to see the biggest conferences pause, reflect, and observe how the last batch of changes turn out… before changing things once more.  Unfortunately it looks as though further changes are unavoidable.

Schools want to make more money and conference swaps can help them do that.  Conferences want to either stabilize themselves, guarantee themselves more money, or both.  And television networks want more and more content — that means games — with which to fill their program schedules.  Add it all up and it certainly appears that the era of the super-conferences is almost here.

Last month, we began a series of breakdowns on realignment and expansion.  In Part One we looked at which schools might be looking to switch conferences in order to bolster their bank accounts.  In Part Two we examined those 25 “up for grabs” schools to see which ones would probably be on power conferences’ wish lists.  In Part Three we looked at the five remaining power conferences and their various options moving forward.

In this, the final part of our series, we try to tie everything together for you.  It’s not been easy because many different people are saying many different things these days.  That’s the nature of these things, of course.  Everyone from an old buddy who works for a major television network to a contact/source who works inside an SEC athletic department wants us to believe he’s got his finger on the pulse of this stuff.  We’ve tried to cut through the clutter and deliver what we believe to be some pretty accurate recon of the shifting conference landscape, but it’s far from definitive.  This a chess game amongst world class players with billions of dollars at stake.  It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that sources — especially those at schools — might be willing to float misinformation to cause panic elsewhere.

So what you’re about to see should be taken as our view on this early-January day of where the conferences might move in the coming days, weeks, months and years.  It should not be taken as  gospel.  With the television dollars, threats of litigation, and pure politics involved in these realignment decisions, what’s true at breakfast could be false by dinner.

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Linebacker Alex Anzalone from Wyomissing Area (Pa.) High School has switched his commitment from Penn State to Florida and plans to enroll in classes for the spring semester.

Anzalone’s decision is due to Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly’s recent interview with the Philadelphia Eagles, according to Mike Farrell of Rivals.

The pick up is a significant one for Florida, which now has five linebackers committed to its 2013 class. Anzalone is considered the nation’s No. 3 linebacker by Rivals.

The loss of Anzalone is also a hit to Notre Dame, which has compiled a class that so far has rivaled Florida and Alabama for the top spot in several national rankings.

Notre Dame’s class will likely be fine if Kelly ends up staying. If he leaves? Good luck to the Fighting Irish with less than four weeks to go until national signing day.

On Monday night, Alabama thrashed Notre Dame 42-14 in the BCS Championship Game.  Now one of the computer ranking services that makes up part of the BCS formula has posted its final rankings for the season and the Fighting Irish are still ranked #1…  ahead of #2 Alabama.  Nevermind that whole 28-point beatdown on Monday.

The Colley Matrix has a top 10 consisting of Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Florida, Oregon, Stanford, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Georgia and Kansas State.

So how can Notre Dame be ranked ahead of Alabama?  The Colley system isn’t allowed to use margin of victory in its formula.  The BCS power brokers decided a few years ago to take margin of victory out of their overall formula and the result has been a string of flawed computer polls.  Alabama’s 28-point win on Monday might as well have been a one-point nailbiter won on a last-second field goal.

Kudos to those computer ranking systems that bailed from the BCS when ordered to remove margin of victory from their formulas.  Had they done it, their rankings would be as useless as Colley’s are today.

Notre Dame still #1 over a team that beat it by 28 points?  That just doesn’t compute.

Usually when we provide you with a “They Said It” quote we do so in order to provide you additional commentary on the same subject.  But in this case, the short comment from Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick following last night’s 42-14 loss to Alabama stands on its own:

“They’re not just better than us.  They’re better than everyone.”

(We’ll pause for Texas A&M fans to shout “Gig ‘em!”)

At MrSEC.com, we’d love to know just how many SEC fans were hoping to see their conference capture another BCS trophy last night.  And how many would have given anything to see Alabama and Nick Saban taste defeat.

Fifty-fifty, maybe?

Alabama wins BCS National Championship Game, beating Notre Dame 42-14
Final AP Poll: Seven SEC teams in top 25
Alabama 1, Georgia and Texas A&M tied at 5, South Carolina 8, Florida 9, LSU 14, Vanderbilt 23
LSU could lose as many as eight juniors early to the NFL
Ole Miss QB Bo Wallace will have surgery on his shoulder this week
Backup Florida QB Jacoby Brissett will transfer
Georgia QB Aaron Murray will return to Athens for his senior season
Vanderbilt WR Jordan Matthews will return to Nashville for his senior season
Chris Wilson is leaving the Mississippi State staff to become Georgia’s defensive line coach
Tennessee basketball player Jeronne Maymon will take a medical redshirt and miss the rest of the season
For all your SEC news and headlines check out MrSEC.com every single day