Making the morning rounds.• Who's ready for some band shots?! Rupert Murdoch and Co. back in the postseason game with the Big Ten, which announced Wednesday that Fox Sports has won the rights to broadcast the first six Big Ten Championship Games, beginning next December in Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium. No surprise there: Fox is a 49-percent partner with the conference in the Big Ten Network. Based on its four-year run with the BCS, we can expect over-explanation of college rules from third-tier NFL announcers, excessive fawning over clean-cut white quarterbacks, jarring product placement, awkward postgame interviews and endless shots of the same two or three band members after nearly every play. [Big Ten Network]
• There will be ... adjustments. The not-so-friendly confines of the east end zone at Wrigley Field for Saturday's game between Illinois and Northwestern will have an effect on strategy, according to Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald, who told a radio station Wednesday that the Wildcats will have a "going-east" red zone plan and a "going-west" red zone plan to account for the in-your-face wall in front of the Sheffield Avenue bleachers. "It will definitely be a factor," Fitzgerald said. "I don't think we're going to be trying to run a lot of go routes." Illinois coach Ron Zook said he told his players to think of it as job training: "If they don't make it to the NFL, they go to the Arena League." [ESPN Chicago]
• OK, what do we hate about this kid? An AFC scouting director said this week that Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton would be a first-round pick if he left the Plains after this season – and let's face it, at this point, he's leaving after this season – coming in just behind longtime scout favorites Andrew Luck, Ryan Mallett and Jake Locker. Many teams will scared away, though, in part because Newton looks to the sideline for presnap checks rather than making them himself at the line of scrimmage, and in part because of, well, that other thing: "We'll want to see how smart he is, and then there is the naive part. He let his dad pick his school for him and all this kind of stuff. If this situation gets really bad, there might be teams that just don't want the PR nightmare." [Chattanooga Times Free Press]
• He'll be back. On the other end of the spectrum, Ohio State linebacker/safety Tyler Moeller – victim of an apparent blindside blow at a bar that led to a hemorrhage and season-ending brain surgery in 2009, and subsequently the owner of college football's baddest head scar – has been granted a sixth year of eligibility in 2011. Moeller has missed most of this season with a torn pectoral muscle suffered in early October. [Columbus Dispatch]
• Zips remain at zero. Oh-and-ten Akron, the last winless team in the I-A/FBS ranks, came thisclose to breaking the nation's longest losing streak Wednesday night against Miami (Ohio), only to let the opportunity slip away on back-to-back turnovers in RedHawk territory in the fourth quarter – the second a fumble inside the Miami ten-yard line with less than two minutes to play – of a 19-14 loss. The Zips' last chance at avoiding the infamy of 0-12 comes next Friday against Buffalo. [Rivals]
• Vandal scandal. The WAC has handed out a half-game suspension to Idaho safety Shiloh Keo for a hit he put on Boise State's backup quarterback, Mike Coughlin, in the Broncos' blowout win last Friday:
The suspension is the same as the one the conference handed down to Boise' Winston Venable earlier in the year, for a helmet-to-helmet shot that knocked Oregon State's James Rodgers out of the game with a concussion. [Idaho Statesman]
Quickly... Iowa State quarterback Austen Arnaud, a three-year starter, will undergo reconstructive knee surgery, ending his college career. ... Hyped Florida freshman Sharrif Floyd on deciding to remain a Gator. ... The Pac-10 is "looking into" opponents faking injuries against Oregon. ... The Tuscaloosa News profiles former Alabama coach Bill Curry ahead of tonight's slaughter of Curry's literally brand new team. ... Cal receiver Jeremy Ross gets a shoutout from Corvallis. ... How Texas can still slip into a bowl game if it fails to get to six wins. ... Derek Dooley goes loco on extended loop. ... And an LSU message boarder brings you the exhaustively researched the mother of all Auburn conspiracy threads.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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