Cameron Newton is burning up the college football landscape, giving new meaning to the concept that Auburn is playing with fire.
Atlanta television station WSB reported Friday that a source said Cecil Newton, Cam’s dad, admitted discussing the sale of his son’s services to Mississippi State for $180,000 through former MSU player Kenny Rogers.
The NCAA has had preliminary discussions with Rogers and has launched into full- scale investigation mode. It doesn’t matter that Mississippi State told Newton to take a hike or that the dad didn’t try pimping out his son to Auburn.
It’s still a violation under the umbrella rule of seeking extra benefits.
With Auburn officially going under the NCAA’s cloud, Auburn coach Gene Chizik chose to play his Heisman Trophy favorite anyway Saturday.
Newton did his part in keeping the second-ranked Tigers headed toward the BCS title game, combining for 299 total yards and four touchdowns in a 49-31 win over Georgia.
Auburn officials won’t let him talk, maybe on the NCAA’s advice and maybe to save their own bacon. A source told WSB that Cecil Newton has said his wife and son knew nothing about it.
The NCAA normally works with glacial-like precision in its investigations, but anything is possible, including this: declaring Newton ineligible and forcing Auburn to forfeit every win it has starting with Saturday night.
I imagine TCU and Boise State will follow this investigation very closely.
Spurrier riding high.
Not that South Carolina hasn’t won a title in a while, but in the closing minutes of the Gamecocks’ division-clinching 36-14 rout of Florida, coach Steve Spurrier had to coach his players on how to lift him on their shoulders.
In his sixth year, and on the same field where he led Florida to six Southeastern Conference titles, Spurrier lifted South Carolina to its first title since winning the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1969.
Spurrier is just getting started. Marcus Lattimore, who had 212 yards and three touchdowns on a school-record 40 carries, is a true freshman and a likely Heisman front-runner next year.
“I saw Marcus on Monday or Tuesday of this week, and I said, ‘Have you got about 40 carries in you this weekend?’ ” Spurrier said afterward, “and he said, ‘Yes, sir.’ That was the plan.”
Texas ad nauseam.
This weekly Texas note comes courtesy of Oklahoma State, the fourth team to come into Austin and blast the Longhorns into the Brazos River.
The 36-16 rout produced a few firsts:
• Texas’ first four-loss home season since 1956, when it went 1-9 under Ed Price, the year before Darrell Royal took over.
• The first time Texas has lost six of seven since 1988, when it went 4-7 under David McWilliams.
• First four-game losing streak since going 4-7 in 1997, John Mackovic’s last year before the current Mack Brown regime.
• If you look at the 32.3 points a game Texas has given up in the last three games, it has been a total team collapse. But the offense is the biggest collection of goats in Austin. It’s 11th in the Big 12 in scoring (21.7 points per game) and ninth in rushing (140.7 yards per game), and second-to-last nationally in turnover margin (minus-1.2).
Fans are calling for true freshman Case McCoy, Colt’s little brother, to replace Garrett Gilbert, who’s 11th in the Big 12 in pass efficiency (106.6).
Brown burned Case’s redshirt year with a token appearance against Rice and hasn’t played him since.
As Austin American-Statesman columnist Cedric Golden so eloquently wrote Sunday, “For those who say he would play in garbage time, what do you call what we’ve been watching?”
A.C. Berkeley.
Pac-10 schools have found a new way to slow down Oregon’s near point-a-minute offense: fake injuries. California, taking a clue from Arizona State and Stanford — or maybe soccer players in Italy — stopped play numerous times with an alarming number of, um, cramps.
Oregon’s no-huddle offense would come to the line of scrimmage and suddenly a Cal lineman would drop as if hit by a sniper.
Maybe it worked. Oregon won only 15-13. Tailback La- Michael James left the stadium with a real injury that required a protective boot on his left foot. Oregon has a bye Saturday.
Fourth-and-short.
This can’t help the Mountain West’s case for AQ consideration: CSU’s crowd of 16,501 was bottomed out only by UNLV’s smattering of 16,111. . . . Notre Dame’s Tommy Rees, the true freshman quarterback who beat Utah in his first start, is the son of Bill Rees, a longtime UCLA assistant and NFL scout. . . . Quotable quote: Oregon State tailback Quizz Rodgers, after losing 31-14 to visiting Washington State, its second Pac-10 win in coach Paul Wulff’s three years: “I can’t remember the last time I wanted to cry at a football game.”
