by John Dolphin
Sports Writer

"We failed to make strict enough rules about gangs after several trustees stormed the field at homecoming twelve years ago," said Dean Rand. "They said they wanted to talk to the administration about donating money for a new stadium, but we don't accept money from hoodlums."

KENSINGTON, Pa. – Police, college officials and the NCAA are investigating an unexpected act of mob violence following Kensington State University’s Saturday football game.

In a last-minute comeback, the KSU Eagles football team squeaked past the Saint Hubert Terriers, delighting the home crowd and inspiring one fan to storm the playing surface.

According to witnesses, 19-year-old sophomore Brian Jensen rushed onto the field, heading for the south end zone. He reached the padded base of the goalpost and pulled on the fixture by rocking his body. Jensen struggled to wrestle the post to the ground for several minutes before security personnel used tasers and pepper spray to subdue him.

Police reports indicate that Jensen caused $5.64 of damage by gouging the synthetic covering of the goalpost with his fingernails.

“I’m shocked by this mob mentality,” said Dean of Students Carl Rand. “I’ve appointed a task force to create at least eleven new policies to make sure this never happens again.”

Task force chair Julian Barnhard has called an emergency meeting for Monday morning.

“We’ll start by coming up with new policies regarding walking on the turf, getting too excited at games, vandalism to goal posts and vandalism to the foam wrapper on the goal posts,” said Barnhard. “We never anticipated something like this could happen here but if we make enough rules – maybe a hundred or more – we’ll restore the type of intellectual community we strive for.”

“I’m excited that we might have metal detectors and body searches when we come into the stadium from now on, just like USC,” said freshman Jodi Mezza. “It feels like I’m at a real college now.”

by Aloysius St. Bernard
Freelance Writer

Tommy Bowden, former assistant coach at Florida State under his father Bobby Bowden, returned to Tallahassee last month, creating confusion over his motives nearly a year after the ousting of his father, who led the football program for 34 years.

The elder Bowden stepped down in January 2010 after NCAA sanctions negated 12 Florida State wins. Despite the sanctions he concluded his coaching career with 377 wins, making him the 2^nd winningest coach in NCAA Division I history, behind only Penn State’s Joe Paterno.

Tommy Bowden remained huddled inside his hotel Monday as the reasons behind his unexpected return to Tallahassee remain unclear. He stepped down from the head coach position at Clemson University in October 2008 after leading the Tigers to a disappointing 3–3 record (1–2 ACC) at the midpoint of a season in which the Tigers had been an almost unanimous preseason pick to win their first ACC title and were ranked #9 in preseason polls.

The mystery surrounding Bowden remained after a Monday news conference was canceled at the last minute because the Days Inn Downtown University Center was not equipped to handle the crowd, due to the morning rush of their free daily continental breakfast.

A spokesman for the younger Bowden said that the coach had returned because he was moved by the anniversary of his father’s ouster, adding “He wasn’t really busy and heard they still had that great crawfish special every Monday night at Barnacle Bill’s.”

“You know, you tell people that Bowden’s back in town and they get excited,” said Kirk Herbstreit, Football Analyst for ESPN College Gameday. “Then you tell them it’s Tommy and they say, ‘Well at least it’s not his numbnut brother who got fired by Auburn and went to ABC Sports or that other jackass Bobby tried to install as head coach over Jimbo Fisher.’”

Asked for comment on the younger Bowden’s appearance in town the day after the Seminole’s annual football banquet, Florida State Athletic Director Randy Spetman declined to issue a statement. Coach Fisher was also unavailable as this story went to press.

by Monty Tufnel
Freelance Writer

In a shocking development yesterday a group of university presidents from six conferences announced the formation of a Commencement Championship Series (CCS) to create the best possible system to identify the number one ranked school academically in the world.

“U.S. News and World Report rankings are simply not useful anymore for truly identifying the best colleges and universities across the planet,” said CCS spokesperson Myra Willowdale in a keynote address for the six presidents from the represented conferences.

The CCS will take a combination of graduation rates, retention rates and students satisfaction survey results to identify the best academic institution. These rates and survey results will be weighted according to each school’s affiliation with conferences, an announcement that caused several schools to quickly change conference allegiances.

The six conferences in the CCS are the Ivy, Patriot, Colonial, Northeast, recently re-formed “Little Ivies,” and the one-day-old Pious Conference, which was formed when Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Cal-Tech and Michigan all banded together to be part of the alliance.

Speaking on behalf of the Pious Presidents, Willowdale said, “They saw an opportunity to do the right thing academically.”

This change in affiliation for schools in the Pious League means that 86 of the NCAA varsity sports will now align under the Pious banner. Football and basketball programs, however, will stay with their former conferences.

Needless to say, many university presidents across the country were outraged. A spokesperson for the SEC, Delmas Allgood, released a statement lambasting the CCS, stating, “The whole thing is a sham put up by a slimy cartel interested in only strengthening a recently weakening perception of quality.”

The first winner of the CCS will be announced in April, with the top school getting first choice of commencement speaker for their 2012 commencement ceremony.

South Carolina Football Secedes from NCAA

Ole Miss, Georgia, Alabama Rumored to Follow

South Carolina set off the latest football conference shakeup yesterday, when Coach Steve Spurrier announced the University’s secession from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

“We, the Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina,” began Spurrier, “in this press conference assembled, do declare and ordain… that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other member institutions under the name of ‘the National Collegiate Athletic Association,’ is hereby dissolved.”

There is widespread speculation that Ole Miss, the University of Georgia, and Alabama will follow the Gamecocks lead, and secede this week. All three schools have scheduled press conferences.

Speculation had built all summer that several members of the SouthEastern Conference (SEC) might break away. The June meeting of SEC athletic directors and coaches in Charleston, South Carolina had ended with Spurrier, Ole Miss Coach Houston Nutt, Georgia Coach Mark Richt, and Georgia Athletic Director Damon Evans breaking into an armory at the Citadel, where they stole a cannon and fired volleys at tour boats taking vacationers to nearby Fort Sumter.

No one was injured in that incident, and none of the coaches were charged, according to Hampton Bouknight, Charleston’s Chief of Police. “Well, they were just having a bit of fun,” Bouknight commented. “And what do you expect me to do, anyway? They’re football coaches. Everybody knows that you can’t charge a football player with a crime until after bowl season. So don’t get me started on why we didn’t arrest the coaches.”

Bouknight went on to add, “In our defense, if it had just been that one fancy-pants athletic director, we would’ve charged him right away. Everyone hates athletic directors, anyway.” (In an unrelated incident, Evans later lost his job, after being charged with driving under the influence in Atlanta, while in the company of a young woman who was not his wife.)

Fox Sports announced that it will create another regional sports network, similar to the Big Ten network, to air the new conference’s games. According to a joint statement by Fox Sports and the new Confederate Conference, “Membership will be limited to to 12 institutions, and no member universities situated north of the Mason-Dixon Line, nor below the southern border of Georgia, shall be considered for inclusion.” Proceeds from the network’s broadcasts may be used by member universities to create legal defense funds for student athletes, to pay severance packages for athletic directors and coaches, or to add club seats to their stadiums. The first televised Confederate Conference match-up this season took place September 11, 2010 when South Carolina played Georgia.

by Aloysius St. Bernard
Freelance Writer

by Anselmo Watkins
Freelance Writer

In the last 25 years, Axmead College Head Football Coach Brett Killman has won over 230 games and led his teams to seven Great Northern Pine League Championships and three NCAA Division III post-season appearances. His booming basso-profondo voice is well known in football stadiums across the Northern United States.

But in the football community, the 61-year-old Killman was also known for his unique e-mails – e-mails always written in all-capitals.

But what is believed to be a fifteen-plus year streak of all-caps e-mails came to an end Friday when Killman received a long-overdue computer upgrade and Axmead IT techs demonstrated that the caps lock could be turned off.

“I got that new machine, and it was all shiny and new. Then, I sat down to type an e-mail to a recruit and it just didn’t look right. The words looked small, weak,” Killman said. “I thought the damn thing was broken. My assistant heard me cussing and came in to ask what was wrong.”

When IT personnel unearthed the old computer, they discovered the caps lock button had been stuck in place by a sticky residue thought to be tobacco spit. The caps lock indicator light on the keyboard had long since burned out.

Killman said that he realized his e-mails looked different than ones he received, but he never had thought much about them.

"You can take the Caps Lock out of the computer," joked NCAA official Chuck Camby, "but you can't take the Caps Lock out of the man."

“I just typed. I hunt and peck, and click the send button. Didn’t have much use for any of the other things the machine could do,” he said. “I’d seen them other e-mails and such written in that lower case, but I just thought it was a different look. It never occurred to me that big letters was something I could turn off. I never really wanted to.”

“Coach isn’t the most technical guy in the world. He relies on his assistants to do that sort of stuff,” said Assistant Coach Art Hamburger. “I think he might have been running a 486. I know it could barely run the most basic e-mail program and Word. But it worked for him, and he didn’t know any better to complain about it.”

Members of the Griffins football program had no idea the all-caps e-mails were purely an accident.

“Coach Killman is really loud. So, I just naturally thought that he was just trying to sound like himself – you know, yelling,” said senior free safety Eddie Donnals. “I’ve been here for five years and it just seemed really natural.”

“I had gotten some e-mails over the years that said ‘stop yelling,’ but I thought they were talking about me on the football field. And I wasn’t about to stop doing that. You gotta yell. You gotta let your men know that you care. Now I understand that they were talking about my e-mails,” he said.

Killman said that the wayward caps lock key also helps to explain some awkward online moments.

“Several years ago I sent a condolence e-mail to one of our ex-players after his father passed away. He stopped coming to our homecomings after I sent it and I was never sure why. Now, I think I know,” Killman said.