Wish the MTN was on my cable system here today

Looks like the next domino to fall in the college conference realignment will be a school removing itself from conferences altogether in football. BYU is apparently going to go independent in football while the rest of its sports rejoin the WAC. The story was first mentioned as possible on Jeff Goodman of Fox's Twitter account and then fleshed out more thoroughly on Sports by Brooks before being reported as a done deal by Colorado State football's official Twitter feed, with a press conference reportedly coming tomorrow. BYU apparently envisions itself as the Notre Dame of the west after being ignored in the conference restructuring talks this summer. Not sure they have the national following in football to pull that off, but it will be interesting to see them try. My question is whether other schools in their area will still schedule BYU for games, because if the MWC says we won't play you then they're going to really have their work cut out for them finding 3-4 teams yearly from Big 12 country eastward to agree to a home and home in Provo.

The waiting game continues for schools with players tied into the NCAA's investigation of the Miami area party allegedly connected to an agent that came to light last month. Frustrated coaches have made pleas for more action to penalize agents for unscrupulous tactics, but an AP study shows the laws that are in place to deal with the problem are almost never used. Beyond that, states like Virginia don't even have a law on the books yet there've been no links to agent problems at their schools which have come to light. Short of a federal law with serious teeth and a commitment to enforcing it, there's little that can be done to keep this kind of scenario from happening again.

Nothing makes more clear how difficult a situation Tennessee is in as a result of Lane Kiffin's 14 month reign of error than the news the school has cancelled their two game series with North Carolina that was to begin next year. The reason is simple to understand: Tennessee doesn't think they can win six games with the schedule the way it's set up for 2011. In addition to the usual Florida/Georgia/Bama trio of tough games, LSU is a western division rotating opponent and Cincinnati is coming to Neyland. Having UNC there as well leaves almost no room for error against teams like South Carolina that are fully capable of beating UT in Knoxville next year. This schedule's also why Lane Kiffin made his PR ploy "proposal" to have USC face UT in the annual kickoff game at the Georgia Dome next season. Derek Dooley's got a couple of long years ahead of him.

A column from the Arizona Republic on Kurt Warner in retirement notes there are still plans for a movie of his life. According to Warner's wife Brenda, the actor she'd like to be cast to play Kurt is Denzel Washington. That would be a curious choice by the producers, because Denzel Washington is undersized at 6 feet tall to pass for Warner. I think he might be lefthanded too. Even if Denzel was offered the role, I assume he'd have concerns about being typecast as Kurt Warner after the film came out.

Oh yeah, Brett Favre's going to play again. This time three of his teammates had to leave camp and come down to Mississippi and put on a dog and pony show to satisfy his ego. Now that he's been able to blow off most of camp and once again been stroked about how wonderful he is, Favre will deign to show up and collect his 13 million dollars this year. Can't wait to see what hoops he'll have the Vikings jump through next year - maybe they'll be required to stage a commando style raid to destroy Jenn Sterger's computer hard drive and cel phone.