One of the Calls in Question

If you had money riding on the Illinois-Ohio State game on Nov. 10, you've probably read about the checkered past of Big Ten referee Stephen Pamon that was outlined in a Yahoo! Sports story by Josh Peter. Pamon, a crew chief who has worked for the conference since 1988, has a checkered history of bankruptcy, casino gambling, child abuse and allegations of sexual harassment.

Here is video of one of the calls Pamon and his crew missed during the Fighting Illini-Buckeye game, won by Illinois, 28-21, The crew is also being criticized for its work in the Penn State-Purdue game on Nov. 3.

Pamon and his then-wife filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after amassing $429,409 in debt, an amount that Pamon's sister-in-law told Yahoo! Sports was in part because of gambling losses. Two of the creditors were casinos.

Reporters' Notebooks

Tuscaloosa News: Alabama's Nick Saban and his wife, Terry, were not injured when Saban’s car hit a downed tree.

Joe Rexrode, Lansing State Journal: Five Michigan State players will not play in the Champs Sports Bowl on Friday because of academic ineligibility or a violation of team rules.

James Staley, Albuquerque Tribune: Now that New Mexico has ended a bowl skid dating to 1961, is a Mountain West title the next item on the menu for the Lobos?

Mike Knobler, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: For coaches, there's an incentive to win, with bonuses for bowl victories written into contracts.

Brian Davis, Dallas Morning News: Texas A&M and Arkansas will each be guaranteed $5 million annually when they begin a nonconference series at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium in 2009.

San Antonio Express-News: Texas A&M defensive end Michael Bennett and fullback Jodie Richardson were ruled academically ineligible for the Alamo Bowl.

Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech backup defensive tackle Brian Jones plans to skip the Gator Bowl and won't return for his senior season because he earned a degree in three years.

Kalani Takase, Honolulu Advertiser: Hawaii will take a party of 542 to the Sugar Bowl, but still expects to turn a profit of $2 million from its trip.

Brett Dawson, Louisville Courier-Journal: A Kentucky student by the name of Rich Brooks gets a lot of email addressed to the school's football coach.

SportsBusiness Journal: A look at what players will receive in bowl gifts.

To bypass registration, go to Bug Me Not. Here is today's mystery link (contains nudity).

Did Slick Rick Pull a Fast One?

Dick Harmon of the Deseret Morning News reports that Tennessee Titan offensive coordinator Norm Chow called UCLA quarterback Ben Olson a minimum of two times last week.

During the calls, Chow told Olson he was looking forward to working with Olson as the UCLA head coach next season. Harmon says the basis of his report comes from sources close to Olson, a former Brigham Young quarterback who transferred to UCLA.

It's not clear what happened next, but Chow suddenly took himself out of the running last Thursday. The suspicion is that Rick Neuheisel — one of the finalists for the job — promised UCLA chancellor Gene Block the earth, moon, sun and stars, including saying "he could produce four different donors, each giving $1 million for the Pauley Pavilion makeover," according to T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times.

SMU Expresses Interest in Jones

Southern Methodist is interested in Hawaii's June Jones as its new football coach, the Dallas Morning News reports.

The Mustangs have been looking for a coach since firing Phil Bennett on Oct. 28.

Jones' five-year, $4-million deal with Hawaii ends in July, and no new deal has been reached. SMU athletic director Steve Orsini has raised around $10 million for the new coach and staff.

Frankly, we put the odds of Jones leaving Hawaii for SMU at slightly less than 10,000-to-1.

Other coaches in the mix at SMU include former Miami coach Larry Coker and former Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione.

East Carolina's Hawaiian Vacation

Here's amateur home video of the last play from Sunday night's Hawaii Bowl, with East Carolina kicker Ben Hartman kicking a 34-yard field goal as time expires, then racing to the other end of the field. He was finally chased down by teammates. The Pirates returned home Monday and some fans called the 41-38 victory over Boise State the biggest in team history. The trip left quite an impression on Nathan Summers, a reporter for the Greenville Daily Reflector.

Notre Dame Football Was Bad Theater

If Crewcut Charlie Weis wasn't under pressure in 2007, he certainly will be in 2008.

A stumbling and bumbling 3-9 season had a huge impact on NBC's ratings of Notre Dame telecasts.

All told, numbers were off 40% from last year and are now half of their 2005 levels. In fact, ratings for NBC's telecasts were half those of ABC's college football games.

The network pays $9 million a year to broadcast this nonsense and, according to Business Week, the downturn could affect the Fighting Irish's next TV deal. The current agreement ends in 2010. In other words, Weis needs to start winning and winning fast.

As Notre Dame losses piled up this fall, the network had to adjust its advertising pricing strategy, giving loads of free ads (known as make-goods) to companies like Allstate and Procter & Gamble to justify the $55,000-to-$80,000 rates for a 30-second ad it negotiated before the season started.

Thanks to Kevin of We Are Penn State.

The Complete Look at Nonconference Travel

Here's the complete breakdown of Map Game Day's Travel Maps, which examined nonconference travel of teams from 1998-2007.

Below you will find charts listing miles traveled by conference, a list of the top and bottom 10 teams and conference-by-conference breakdowns, including independents. We wanted to put all of this information on one post for future reference.

As stated earlier, Richard recalibrated his data to reflect conference alignments as they were each year the games were played. It was determined that this was the proper way to treat the data, and we apologize for any errors this created.

This adjustment made for some notable changes in the top 10 list, with Hawaii falling completely out of the rankings. Under the new parameters, the Rainbows took only six nonconference trips from 1998-2007, totaling 19,834 miles. Hawaii is still the most-traveled team overall, covering 138,082 miles in the past 10 years. We hope to examine this data closely in a future post.

Click an image for a closer look.