College Football Weekly News Bites, Spring Fever edition

Jim Harbaugh is still awesome, and there are only 123 days until college football starts up again.

A cornucopia of Jim Harbaugh news. Okay, maybe a cornucopia is a bit of an exaggeration; but “cornucopia” is fun to say. First, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was hanging out in Rome with the Michigan football team.

The team spent the better part of a day handing out supplies to refugees. One of the refugees, a cheeky fellow from Nigeria, rendered Harbaugh uncharacteristically speechless when he asked the coach why the sport is called “football” when there is minimal foot contact. The coach and the refugee both agreed that perhaps the sport should be called “throwball” instead.

Er, Jim, maybe you could have pointed out that the kicking game can change a team’s fate in an instant, and therefore is a crucial part of the sport.  Regardless, throwball just doesn’t have the same cachet.

In other Jim Harbaugh news, a Michigan couple is so enamored of the Wolverines’ head coach that they named their 4th child after him. Harbaugh Lee Fettig was born to Gregg and Lani Fettig in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. He even had a Michigan football next to him on the official birth announcement.

I would say that is a bit excessive, but I did mull over the idea of naming my dog “Bowden” so I really have no room to judge. Here is a picture of the lil’ mite.

Let’s hope this works. In an attempt to change their reputation as one of the smarmiest programs in college football, Baylor has hired a female president, Dr. Linda Livingstone, to take over for interim president David Garland.

Hiring a woman to repair the tarnished reputation of the Baylor program is a step in the right direction, but will it be enough? Livingstone will have to make profound changes to the very culture of the university in order to make positive changes.

The problem is Baylor has still made no adjustments to its sexual assault policy, nor has it made any strides into protecting the students’ safety. It is early into Livingstone’s tenure, so all of this could change. But hiring Livingstone seems like a PR move more than any acknowledgment of a cultural issue.

Baylor hiring a woman president may just be a sop to distract the NCAA and the public from the deep-seated issues at the heart of the scandal.

Next: Ranking the 2017 Top DBs

It’s like the New Year’s countdown, but far cooler. Someone is even more obsessed with college football than I am. There is a college football countdown clock set up on the internet. So thanks to whatever football-fanatic/computer nerd that made it.

So there it is, y’all.  Another week, another round of college football news.  See you next week.