Jeff Brinson to Central Florida? Plus, other Thursday mid-day stuff

Former Iowa running back Jeff Brinson, who left the program this offseason to be closer to his St. Petersburg, Fla., home, is exploring options.

This tampabay.com blog item suggests Central Florida could be the one. An excerpt from the blog:

Brinson is hopeful of landing a hardship waiver (due to a family illness) that would allow him to play this fall (with three years of eligibility) instead of having to sit out the season as most Division I-A transfers do. He

met with USF's coaches back in March, but Crawford said the Bulls "showed early interest but have fallen off a little" in communications with Brinson.

He has since visited Central Florida, which already has a standout back from Pinellas County in Largo's Brynn Harvey, who rushed for 1,109 yards and 14 touchdowns as a sophomore last fall. Crawford said UCF is looking into Brinson's paperwork to evaluate the viability of a hardship waiver. Brinson also has talked with coaches from Florida International, Bethune-Cookman and South Alabama, where former USF assistant Greg Gregory is the offensive coordinator.

Now here's a man-bites-dog story:

Iowa made a $55,000 profit on its Orange Bowl trip even though it didn't sell 3,175 tickets at $175 a pop out of its allotment of 17,500. That's news. College teams don't make profit on bowl trips too much.

The profit was made despite Iowa spending $83,119 for its self-described "institutional party," which includes UI leadership and others.

The Hlog has figured out the way to make a profit on these bowl trips: Win lots of games, go to the biggest bowls, get the biggest payouts. Iowa's take from the Orange Bowl was $1.95 million.

Want to know why a school like Rutgers might be attractive to the Big Ten when it has a small footballl stadium and not much of a marquee name?

Bill Rabinowitz of the Columbus Dispatch has this interesting analysis, which includes this passage:

Andrew Zimbalist is a sports economist at Smith College in Massachusetts. Despite his distaste for what he describes as the ever-increasing commercialization of college sports, he acknowledged the financial benefits that expansion could reap.

"Let's say in some of these areas you're getting a dollar a month (extra from cable subscribers for having the Big Ten Network),"  Zimbalist said. "Each household is $12 a year. So if you add 3 million households, that's $36 million in revenue. On top of that, you'll get more revenue from advertising.

"Potentially, you could be talking tens of millions of dollars when you add a properly positioned team."

 For a Q&A with the Chicago Tribune's Teddy Greenstein on Big Ten expansion,

click here.