Is the rest of college football finally closing the gap on the SEC?
Unless you’re a college football junkie, a high school football coach in Southern California, or one of those weirdos who spends entirely too much on Rivals.com’s message boards, chances are pretty good you’ve probably never heard of S’ua Cravens. It’s ok, you’re hardly alone; only the junkiest of all college football junkies knows of Cravens, the top high school safety recruit in the class of 2013, who committed to play at USC this week.
Given Cravens’ stature as an elite prospect, his commitment is plenty newsworthy in its own right, but the real story is what his verbal means to USC “big picture,” where Lane Kiffin is in the process of putting together a class for the ages. Limited to just 15 scholarships because of NCAA sanctions (although you figure Lane Kiffin and Co. will figure out a way to finagle a few more by Signing Day), USC has accumulated so much talent so quickly, that by the time they all sign on the dotted line in February it could down as one of the best classes, player-for-player in the history of recruiting.
As things stand the Trojans have eight total commitments, all of them four-star or above, six who are in ESPNU’s top 80 players, and three of which are ranked as Rivals.com’s Top 10 players in the country nationally. Those three are Cravens, Washington quarterback Max Browne (generally regarded as the best quarterback in the country), and Maryland’s Kenny Bigelow (the best defensive end in the country), and when you factor in two of the top running backs in high school football in Ty Isaac of Illinois and Justin Davis, from Stockton, CA, and elite cornerback Chris Hawkins, it’s easy to see why everyone around the program is excited for the future. And the scary thing is the Trojans are hardly done, and are still involved with a handful of other elite recruits.
Safe to say, it’s a good to Lane Kiffin. And he’s hardly the only one cleaning up early.

Like the rest of you, I was stunned- I mean, absolutely stunned- to hear the news of former West Virginia coach Bill Stewart’s passing yesterday afternoon. It was the kind of information you see come across the wire, look at, process, look at again and then double-check to see if somehow you’ve misread something.
Over at the college football website I run, CrystalBallRun.com, I brought up what I thought to be a
On Saturday, the never-ending Ferris wheel ride that is college football realignment took another spin, when more rumors surfaced about a heavy flirtation between Florida State and the Big XII Conference. The news hit with a flash, and only got flashier when a high-ranking Board of Trustees member as well as FSU head football coach Jimbo Fisher both made public statements supporting the school’s effort to look outside the ACC. And when those comments hit, well my goodness did it cause an uproar; on Twitter, message boards, and every strange internet outpost in between.
Look, I’ll be honest: When you write about sports for a living, eventually, everything starts to run together. The players, the games, the seasons, the scandals, whatever, at some point you realize that they’re all basically the same. Sure, some ancillary facts might get changed up, and yes, there’s a reasonable chance that Todd Graham is working somewhere different than he was a year ago. But at the end of the day, 2011 wasn’t all that much different than 2010, and 2010 was a lot like 2009.
On Tuesday night, University of Arkansas Athletics Director Jeff Long fired head football coach Bobby Petrino. He used a
For those of you who may have missed it, it was a heck of a Thursday night in Fayetteville, Arkansas. No, I’m not talking about the drink specials down at the biggest bar on campus, but instead what’s going on inside Arkansas’ football program right now. To call it a “mess” would be an understatement; this is the BP oil-spill come to college football.
As I mentioned on Thursday
I’m just going to be real with you here for a second: If you’re looking for some quality college football recruiting coverage, Aaron Torres Sports simply is not the place for you (although, we are doing some things at the other site I work for,
It was right around this time four months ago that I was putting the finishing touches on my book ‘