College Football

College football fans who were willing to pay to watch the Nov. 16 Penn State-Notre Dame game on television can save their $9.95 for something else. ABC Sports announced yesterday that its plan to offer the game to about half the country on a pay-per-view basis had been abandoned. "We were told that it was called off because of technical problems," Penn State athletic director Jim Tarman said yesterday. "ABC felt that they couldn't do a very good job with such a short time frame.

The Eagles announced Wednesday that former offensive line coach Bill Walsh, 84, died Sunday at his home in Atlanta. Mr. Walsh spent 32 years coaching professional football and wrapped up his career with the Eagles from 1987 to '91 before retiring, the Eagles said in a statement. A former star at Phillipsburg (N.J.) High School, Mr. Walsh played college football at Notre Dame, where he was an all-American center and a part of two national championship teams. After a six-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers and two all-pro selections, Mr. Walsh began his pro coaching career in 1960 with the Dallas Texans of the American Football League.

Like Christmas sales and shortened days, the Army-Navy game is an early December fixture. The colorful event, to be contested for the 109th time this afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field, has been played in all but five of the last 100 Decembers. World War I canceled it in 1917 and 1918. The 1928 and 1929 games never took place because of institutional disagreements over eligibility rules. In each of those cases, however, it was understood that the annual football meeting of military academies one day would be resumed.

The Inquirer previews the 2007 college football season, starting with a series on the area's Heisman hopefuls: SUNDAY, DAN CONNOR, PENN STATE: The senior linebacker remembers playing Pop Warner in Wallingford, Delaware County. MONDAY, MATT RYAN, BOSTON COLLEGE: The senior quarterback was lightly recruited at Penn Charter. TUESDAY, STEVE SLATON, WEST VIRGINIA: The former Conwell-Egan star running back, now a junior, also drew little interest. WEDNESDAY, RAY RICE, RUTGERS: The junior running back makes it a trio.

Some time soon, perhaps within a few days, Eric Ramsey, a former Auburn University football player, will spin some tapes in public that could shake the foundation of college football. Ramsey has apparently taped more than 100 hours of conversations with Auburn coaches, alumni and even the head coach Pat Dye. They catalogue more violations concerning his own wages and working conditions than the National Collegiate Athletic Association can shake a stick at (But, rest assured, the NCAA will find a bigger stick)

The latest in college football scandals is now emerging in Chicago where a grand jury is investigating agents who signed athletes to professional contracts while the athletes were still in school by offering money (and possibly other emoluments). The theme of corruption and college athletics is hardly a new one. Last fall the big story was payments to athletes at Southern Methodist University, a scandal so large that it resulted in the cancellation of the school's 1987 season. The year before that the University of Georgia lost a lawsuit filed by a faculty member fired for refusing to give football players undeserved passing grades in their remedial reading classes.

What if academic football ended its season each year on Thanksgiving weekend? Academic football? That's the fall sport which is neither professional nor commercial; it is part of the educational experience available to participants and observers under the auspices of accredited academic institutions. It is also called college football. If academic football ceased at the end of November, student-athletes and student-fans would have more time for study - a consummation devoutly to be wished by those whose primary concern is the academic welfare of an entire student body.

The Eagles announced Wednesday that former offensive line coach Bill Walsh, 84, died Sunday at his home in Atlanta. Mr. Walsh spent 32 years coaching professional football and wrapped up his career with the Eagles from 1987 to '91 before retiring, the Eagles said in a statement. A former star at Phillipsburg (N.J.) High School, Mr. Walsh played college football at Notre Dame, where he was an all-American center and a part of two national championship teams. After a six-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers and two all-pro selections, Mr. Walsh began his pro coaching career in 1960 with the Dallas Texans of the American Football League.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL is on the verge of finally having a playoff, its own version of the final four. For the first time, all the power brokers who run the highest level of the sport are comfortable with the idea of deciding a championship the way it's done in just about every other sport. "Yes, we've agreed to use the P-word," Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said. They want to limit it to four teams. That's for sure. Now they just have to figure out how to pick the teams, where and when to play the games and what to do with the bowls.

College football is on the verge of finally having a playoff, its own version of the final four. "Yes, we've agreed to use the P word," Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Thursday. As for the current Bowl Championship Series, it's on life support. Any chance that it survives past the next two seasons? "I hope not," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said. "This is a seismic change for college football," BCS boss Bill Hancock said after 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director wrapped up three days of meetings in Hollywood, Fla. Hancock said the commissioners would present options for a four-team playoff to their leagues over the next month to determine which option they like best.

When Tom Lemming says he's going on the road to visit with the top high school prospects in the country, he really means it. "I'm driving this year between 55,000 and 60,000 miles in just four months," said Lemming, the author of Tom Lemming's Prep Football Report, considered in some circles the bible of college football recruiting. "I'll be in every single state except Alaska, and I'm almost in every single city. "I did some in October, some in November. After Christmas, I went all the way to national signing day. Now I've been on the road the last two months and I have one more month to go. " Lemming, 56, spent time last weekend at Cardinal O'Hara High School meeting with some of the area's top high school prospects, including 6-foot-9, 270-pound Penn Charter defensive tackle Mike McGlinchey and Woodbury quarterback Anthony Averett, as part of a program conducted by the National Collegiate Scouting Association.

The Temple football team has a lot of work to do. The Owls are replacing 14 starters from last season's squad and transitioning from the Mid-American Conference to the Big East. A Bowl Championship Series conference, the Big East is expected to have tougher competition than the MAC. Stressful situation? Not for Temple coach Steve Addazio. "I like our personnel," the second-year coach said Thursday after the Owls' ninth practice of the spring. "It's just that we are young and adapting to some different concepts.

THE NCAA infractions committee has hit North Carolina's football program with a 1-year postseason ban, a reduction of 15 scholarships and 3 years of probation following an investigation into improper benefits and academic misconduct. In a ruling yesterday, the committee said the school was responsible for multiple violations, including academic fraud and a failure to monitor its football program. It also issued a 3-year show-cause penalty for former assistant coach John Blake, who had received personal loans from an NFL agent.

Chris Crowley says there will be feelings of withdrawal, but he felt it was the best decision for his Woodrow Wilson football program. Additional schooling intersected with the year-round, madcap pace of coaching, so Crowley had to give one up, and to his regret, coaching didn't win out. Crowley recently resigned after four successful seasons in which he helped revive a once-proud program at Wilson. "I am finishing up on some supervisory certifications, and coaching a varsity sport these days is a year-round effort, and I didn't think it was fair not to give everything I have given in the past to the football program, so I feel somebody else should coach," Crowley said.

The other night, when Jeremy Lin dribbled a basketball at the top of the key and had the audacity to wave off his New York Knicks teammates - four guys standing around doing nothing while the one, Lin, determined the fate of this particular NBA game - I was hooked. We all know what happened. Lin swished a three-point shot to give the Knicks a thrilling victory over the Toronto Raptors and continued on his mission to resurrect New York pro basketball. He also struck a global blow for underdogs.

EVEN BEFORE the scandal broke at Penn State and led to his ouster, it was inevitable that the day would come when Joe Paterno would be gone and someone else would be running the Nittany Lions football program. No one could foresee the circumstances of how that would occur - that he would be toppled in the controversy that erupted in the wake of child sex-abuse allegations lodged against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. But no one goes on forever, not even if it sometimes seemed that the beloved JoePa would do just that.

Chris Spellman was like lots of other red-blooded American 12-year-olds. He had football posters on all four walls of his mind and football dreams in all four chambers of his heart. He was going to play in college. He was going to get a scholarship. He was going Division I. As it turned out, Spellman was right about one thing: He was good enough to play college football. He was good enough to earn a scholarship. He was good enough to go Division I. But the twist to this story at the end of a week dominated by the breathless speculation, coverage, and analysis of the NCAA's national signing day for football was that Spellman decided his own dream wasn't right for him. The quarterback from Bishop Eustace Prep School turned down three Division I scholarship offers and has opted to play Division III football and focus on his academics.