Yeah, I'm ok with this. It's more than acceptable. Make it happen already Marinatto (and find another good bowl like the Liberty).

According to league and bowl sources, the Gator is open to locking into a Big East team for all four years and ditching the hybrid model, but only if it can select Notre Dame twice in the four-year span. The Big East only wants to allow Notre Dame to be selected once in the four-year span.

Link has more about possibilities with the Champs and Sun. Actually, McMurphy's latter scenarios horrify me. Everyone does realize that the Gator/Sun thing, while lame (and hopefully, soon to be a thing of the past), is not nearly as big of a concern as landing another quality bowl, right? Is Rutgers the only team that cares about this, given that they are the ones that end up getting boned every year? If the BE screws these negotiations up, you can say goodbye to the long term future of this football conference.

Tom Luicci has notes on Sanu to WR, UConn saying no to ND, and a bowl update that jibes with the info linked above. The real Greg Schiano isn't joining Twitter, so you'll have to be happy with the fake one and his jokes about Timmy Brown playing DE. Ryan D'Impaler says that 2009 was the hardest offseason yet for him at Rutgers. Devin McCourty was rocking the gold tie on gold shirt combo, but he still has nothing on Jarvis Johnson in that department. And, what the entire world has been waiting for, clambake pictures.

The post here a few weeks back about a series with Duke consisted of my transcript of a David Cutcliffe radio interview. He said Duke would play Rutgers in the future, in direct contrast to looser assertions about possibly scheduling other teams. There's still nothing yet in the way of official confirmation, and I don't know if there will be for a while. As you may recall, Rick Neuheisel first leaked word of a series with UCLA to one of their regional alumni clubs, which Tom Luicci verified a week later. UCLA is a "name" team, and my pure speculation is that the athletic department was more keen to let that one out earlier, but probably wants to announce any other new games together, at a later point in time.

We didn't get hear anything official about UCLA until two months later, and the subsequent media reports didn't mention the Neuheisel leak angle. @DougGraber on Twitter (presumably, not the real Doug Graber) asked the Ledger's Brendan Prunty about the series yesterday, and Prunty's response was that he hears the schools are "talking".

There's nothing new on Darrell Givens to report. All signs still point to go however. One discussion on Rivals yesterday mentioned a similar scenario with George Johnson a few years back, although he was denied admission to UVA earlier in the calendar, after barely missing their SAT score cutoff. He had originally committed to the Hoos over a year prior (Rutgers hadn't yet offered at that time). But, true; I don't recall much fuss regarding that situation. The only reaction this year to the uncertainity surrounding Williams and Harrison was a near-universal hope that they would qualify, and there's no indication that DG's academics were even that shaky.

Any guesses on who this was?

Schiano won't say who it was but Rutgers received a notable commitment earlier this year. NCAA rules prohibit the coach from elaborating but the kid is from New Jersey
....
"We had our first kid tell me, 'It's been a dream of mine to play at Rutgers,'" Schiano said. "I did get goose bumps."

Greg Schiano: NYC is ours (and, he doesn't have the time to worry about any other program).

"Well, yeah," Schiano said. "You sense everybody there. He's a New York City guy, he's made a commitment to do that, but I don't worry about the other people. As long as we're doing our job. My whole thing has always been recruit the right guys for Rutgers. My thing is your team better be a reflection of you. Recruit guys who love the game."

Brian Kelly on opening the season at Rutgers.

"I screamed," Kelly said Tuesday. "I yelled. It did no good."

It's time to worry about Darnell Stapleton's injury. Reports out of Bengals camp have Brian Leonard breaking off a few good runs (when the OL isn't looking awful), and still leading the #2 HB race. L.J. Smith was hoping to finally practice in Baltimore. The Ledger has an interview/video up with Kevin Brock. Mike Teel looked good on Monday, but struggled yesterday in throwing an INT to Courtney Greene. Greene is coming on (with an endorsement from Coach Jim Mora).

It's early, but check out the preseason camp depth chart for Maryland. They look very young.

One other thing worth watching, which I keep forgetting to mention: Cincinnati traded Edwin Encarnacion last week, which means that Todd Frazier might end up at 3B in the majors after all. He was hitting well enough for left field, but he has all-star potential in the infield.

The Times had a story yesterday about the process of RU building its new nursing building in New Brunswick.