On Iowa Daily Briefing 6.22.12

The NBA season is over. The world champion is Miami. The MVP is LeBron James. But let's not forget the Big Ten's contribution to the Heat's championship run.

Juwan Howard, Michigan. Howard scored just seven points over nine playoff appearances for Miami. But on Thursday night he became the first and only member of Michigan's Fab Five to get an NBA championship.

Now, on with the Hlinks.

-- Nebraska just isn't digging this whole concept of a college football playoff.

Chancellor Harvey Perlman hasn't been an obstructionist, but he keeps blowing a futile horn for a plus-one after the current bowls rather than semifinals preceding a championship game.

Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas, however, is a happy warrior on the playoff front. Thursday, Neinas said “What we're going to do is reclaim New Year's Day and New Year's Eve for college football. Turn back the clock, so to speak. These are the games you can't miss.”

Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini doesn't want any kind of playoff, period. In fact, he'd like to go pre-BCS, when polls determined national-champions.

Wow, talk about going old-school.

-- Nebraska is forward-thinking, I would say, when it comes to a football player who looks backwards.

This item from the Lincoln Journal Star's Brian Christopherson tells us the Cornhuskers got a verbal commitment last weekend from a long snapper. His name is Gabriel Miller. He is from Mishawaka, Ind., and is ranked third in the nation among high school deep-snappers.

"Have you ever seen a punt team when they can't snap it?" said Ross Els, Nebraska's recruiting and special teams coordinator. "It's an absolute disaster.

“You can't go through that. You have to have a guy. A lot of people might say that's a wasted scholarship. Try snapping a few over the punter's head and it just looks ridiculous. That's not how you win Big Ten championships. That's a huge, huge position, and that's why we're recruiting it."

-- Athlonsports.com lists 25 Heisman Trophy "contenders" from the Big Ten in the order in which it thinks they should be rated, with the obvious No. 1 being Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson.

Well, it's not really obvious. Returning Wisconsin running back Montee Ball was a Heisman finalist last year, after all, while Robinson was not. Ball is Athlon's No. 2 guy. Obviously.

Iowa has a mere one player among the 25, quarterback James Vandenberg at No. 8.

Wisconsin has six players on the list, Ohio State five.

[caption id="attachment_419960" align="alignright" width="255" caption="The Masked Rider takes a stand"]

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-- This was a wonderful story while it lasted:

Texas Tech reportedly was considering cancelling a football game this September at Texas State because it found out the game might be telecast on the Longhorn Network.

The Red Raiders would have gone with an 11-game schedule rather than play Texas State on Texas' network.

But Friday morning, Chip Brown of Orangebloods tweeted this:  I was just told LHN/ESPN will not pursue the Texas State-Texas Tech fball game that had raised blood pressure of #TTech officials.

-- Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is loudly bemoaning all the transfers plaguing men's basketball.

But as this Greensboro News-Record story linked in the previous paragraph tells us:

Duke itself is in the running for Mississippi State guard Rodney Hood, who was reportedly on campus for a visit last week.

-- Finally, here are the

15 worst kinds of sports fans. Does anyone you know belong in one of these groups? I've seen too many No. 9s and known too many No. 13s.