Editor’s Note: Travis Kriens has been an important part of The Collegian and its sports columns. We thank him for his hard work over the years.

My first story in The Collegian had the dateline, May 2, 2007. It was about the annual spring football game that had taken place that past weekend. It was the second time I had been in the press box at Coughlin-Alumni Stadium, the first being a game earlier that season in which the sports information department needed extra help with a football game since a wrestling tournament was going on in Frost Arena at the same time. That was my first taste at what my next five years would look like.

After the scrimmage, I tracked down Sports Information Director Jason Hove to see if he had any final stats that I could use in my story. On the way up to his office, he asked me if I was doing anything that summer. I was not and jumped at the chance to be a part of the SDSU athletic department.

As my freshman year came to an end a week later, I received a call from Jason asking if I was around for an interview. I had just moved back home for summer vacation the day before. We scheduled an interview a few days later and I started my four-and-a-half years in the SID department in late August 2007.

Ventures into newspapers, media relations, radio and television led me to my internship with the Charlotte Bobcats this season. When I look back on where I was, nearly five years ago to the day to where I am now, it is something else. The games come and go. The stories are written. The shows are broadcast. When those are done, they become memories that you look back on with joy or disappointment.

Almost every ex-athlete will tell you the thing they miss the most is their teammates. Not the games, the practices or the travel. They miss the bond with the people that they make along the way and the same goes for me. I have met quite a few people over the past five years that helped me get to where I am now and have joined me along the way.

• Being a student assistant in the SDSU SID office is the best job I have ever had and it will probably be tough to top. Jason Hove and Ryan Sweeter were great to work for and taught me a ton over the years. Anyone that has had the chance to work with or for them would say the same.

• My counterparts in the marketing department as graduate assistants were Blake Day and Emily Kuecker. Blake knows more about the NFL Draft than any person I know. Emily is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, along with being one of the easiest people to talk to ever. They are great people and wherever they go and whatever they do in their careers, I have no doubt that they will be very successful.

• My bosses at the Charlotte Bobcats, B.J. Evans and Josh Rosen, gave me the opportunity to see how things run in the NBA and I will have stories that I can tell for the rest of my life from what I have experienced over the last four months.

• When I moved to Charlotte, I formed new relationships that were similar to the ones I had in Brookings. Jessica James was the fellow intern that I shared an office with. She’s completely opposite from me in nearly every way imaginable, but somehow it worked out. In no other place or situation would we have been around each other or gotten to know each other like we did. Mark Kern was the multimedia intern that wrote game recaps and previews for Bobcats.com. In a group of interns that grew up in the Carolinas region, Mark grew up in Kansas and had a background similar to mine. The whole experience would have been a lot less rewarding without these two.

• Charlie Hildebrand, Drue Aman and Marcus Traxler comprised three-fourths of The Sports Lounge TV set with me for the majority of the year long, 40 plus episode run that we had. I met Charlie when he started working with me during the summer of 2010 and our conversations in the office were usually the highlight of the day. Drue and Marcus have both been fellow writers with me at The Collegian, as well as editors of the sports section. They are two of the most talented writers I have been around during my time at the paper and believe me, I have seen a lot of them come and go.

• Nathan Stacken was co-creator of the TV and radio shows. He may be the most passionate sports fan I have seen and if he had it his way, he would do a show every day. Doing the TV show and being around those guys is the most fun I have had over the last five years.

• Dustin Veurink was also a part of the Sports Lounge, behind the scenes as a member of the production crew during the first season. Dustin became the jack of all trades: camera man, audio technician, director and recorder. Without him, the show doesn’t run.

• Lowell Haag and Tami Watson were unbelievably helpful in getting The Sports Lounge up and going. From scheduling times to shoot the show on the third floor of Pugsley to little technical things, they made sure we were able to get the show running. My college advisor, Jim Paulson, taught me a lot about how the television news industry works and aided in turning the TV show into a finished product.

• Radio was something I also wanted to try and I got to experience a wide variety. The first time I met the future voice of SDSU athletics, Tyler Merriam, he was working in the SID department just like I was. The biggest thing he did for me was giving me the opportunity to be the play-by-play guy for SDSU softball during the 2011 season with broadcasts on GoJacks.com along with a half dozen or so games on Brookings radio. I had done a handful of softball/baseball games the previous season, but was given full reign for 2011. It was always something I wanted to try and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

• On the Sports Block radio show, we were fortunate to have the Argus Leader’s SDSU beat writer Terry Vandrovec call in every week and he was tremendous each time.

• Doing an hour of radio with the head football coach at a Division I University on the student station for two seasons is something that just doesn’t happen, but that’s what John Stiegelmeier did. Stig could have gone home and spent an extra hour with his wife at night or do anything else with his time during the season where there isn’t much free time, but he chose do radio once a week for an hour with me, Charlie and Nathan. He is truly one of the good guys.

• My parents, Lee and Lee Ann Kriens have supported me with everything I have wanted to do. Not seeing your parents for four months and being over 1,300 miles from home is a lot different when you have never been more than an hour away from them for an extended period of time. Every child wants to make their parents proud and I hope I have done that.

As my time in Charlotte comes to an end, the difference between working at SDSU and with an NBA team are few and far between. No matter what media relations department you work in, it’s the same basic concept; work on game notes, handle media requests, travel with the team when necessary, work the game, etc.

What is interesting is when you move on in life, how many of those people you have met throughout the years do you still keep in contact with? Most people you meet end up just being acquaintances, while others become friends. It’s weird to think that I will never see some of the people I’ve worked with for four month again. Same thing goes for those during my five years at SDSU. Those you keep in contact with after you move on become friends.

The Bobcats hired Jerome Hubbard as their communication director about three weeks into my internship. He had a saying, “Life … is a dash.” I had no idea what it meant and for weeks kept asking him what he was talking about. He explained people try to dash through each day just trying to get to the finish line. After a while, the days, months and years of dashes add up. It goes by quick.

Jake’s father, Jay Bittle, who is an assistant at Bixby, as well as an AAU coach for the Oklahoma Elite, told OKHoops.com that Jake “decided to go to SDSU since they’ve been the ones on him from day one of his junior year.”

Scouting reports say that Bittle is a versatile player that can play on or off the ball. His natural position in the past has been at point guard, but after a growth spurt, he’s now a threat off the wing. Bittle can cover positions one to three, while still maintaining the ability to run an offense. His jumper is a threat, but he’s at his best when going to the hoop on offense. He was also one of the best defenders in Oklahoma this past season.

Bixby head coach Scott Padek said that the best way to describe Jacob is, “the bigger the game is, the better he plays.”

Bittle had some interest from Tulane and Oral Roberts, along with an offer from Denver. He also had home visits from Samford and Central Arkansas.

Jacob, along with his father and grandfather, were at the SDSU vs. Baylor game in Albuquerque, N.M., on March 15. However, Padek thinks that his mind was made up before then.

“The fact that they (SDSU) made it (to the NCAA Tournament) didn’t hurt anything, but if they had finished second in their tournament and didn’t get in, I don’t think that would have kept him from going. I think by the first of March, he pretty much decided that was the place for him.”

During his senior season, Bittle averaged 12.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals in 27 games.

In a December, 2011 article on OKHoops.com, when asked if he had any favorites at the moment Bittle responded, “Definitely Denver. Denver is at the top of my list right now.”

The Bixby guard also admitted that location would play a factor in his decision.

“I’m not looking to go too far away from home,” Bittle said.

So what made the difference and why did things change, according to coach Padek?

“The University of Denver was in the mix until mid-January. I think [DU’s] coaching styles, kind of a screamer and big time cusser, put everyone on pins and needles there and Jacob’s not looking for that. That wiped them off the list.”

Padek also said that the priority of SDSU’s team compared to where Denver might rank in that market makes a difference. In other words, SDSU basketball is a big deal and that played to Bittle.

With the television packages and online streaming available today for all SDSU home games, location isn’t as big of a factor when it comes to being able to watch a child go off to college and following their career.

In the end, it came down to what school was the right fit and that ended up being the Jacks.

“[SDSU] recruited him hard,” Padek explained, “but they gave him his space and time to finish his high school season and let him have some time to think about what he wanted to do. I think Jacob really appreciated that.”

It will be interesting to see what the future of recruiting for SDSU basketball holds after a strong showing against Baylor. For a team not known for venturing too far from home to look for players (a pair of Canadians in Kai Williams and Taevaunn Prince aside), SDSU may find that an invite to the Big Dance will open up the door for them to bring in players that can get them back there on a yearly basis.

“I think what’s really going to help him is that he gets a year to play with (Nate) Wolters and practice against him every day. That’s going to help you enormously,” Padek said.

It is the first time that the Jackrabbits have ever made the men’s NCAA Tournament and fans have analyzed and dissected where SDSU was seeded. The Collegian inquired about the selection process of the Jackrabbits and got a response from the NCAA men’s tournament associate director David Worlock about SDSU via email.

When asked about whether or not the Jackrabbits’ first-time status was a factor in the selection, Worlock responded: “The fact that South Dakota State had never been to the tournament was not a factor at all in the committee’s seeding process. Each team is judged independently, regardless of conference affiliation or past success.”

Some pointed to 13th-seeded Montana, who was listed higher one spot higher on the overall seed list than the Jackrabbits, despite playing in the statistically weaker Big Sky and finishing 31 spots behind SDSU in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).

“To [the] point about Montana, the strength of a conference (i.e. conference RPI) is not one of those factors. It is never considered by the committee,” Worlock stated.

The SDSU men’s basketball team has been though a lot in the past 10 years. Going from a Division II power to one of the worst teams in Division I to a team that is being recognized nationally on a weekly basis at the highest level of college basketball has given fans plenty to talk about. This team can give people more to talk about in the coming month if it can win the Summit League Tournament in Sioux Falls at the beginning of March.

What makes a conference tournament for a non-BCS conference so different and exciting is that the only way a team from the conference will make it to the NCAA’s is if they win the tournament. Your season is made or becomes a disappointment over a span of three or four days.

This year the Summit has two teams that are head and shoulders above everyone else: Oral Roberts and SDSU. A possible conference title game on ESPN2 between two teams that will likely have over 50 wins combined has led some people to ask whether or not one of these two teams could get an at-large bid to the NCAA’s (most likely Oral Roberts as the USD loss last week takes SDSU out of the equation). I shake my head at such talk.

To put it simply, the Summit League will never get more than one bid to the NCAA Tournament.

To even suggest it shows a lack of knowledge of how the selection process works.

The perfect example of this is the 2004-05 Oral Roberts team that went 25-7 (13-3 in conference) and had a signature win at Georgetown and an RPI of 50 but lost to seven-seed Oakland in the finals. The biggest problem with ORU is that their strength of schedule was ranked 302 out of 330 teams because of who they played in conference. Based on the RPI, it ranked from 146 (UMKC) to 325 (Centenary) ,and you just can’t have enough strength of schedule to get an at-large bid when half your games are played against teams like that.

The same is true for SDSU and Oral Roberts this season.

Oakland tried to buck this low SOS trend the past few years by having a hellish out-of-conference schedule. They knew they were the best team in the league and could handle the challenge of playing big-time competition in preparation for an NCAA Tournament game. Last season, Oakland played seven BCS schools, with Michigan having the worst RPI at 52. A list that included Ohio State (2), Purdue (12), West Virginia (21), Tennessee (33), Michigan State (45) and Illinois (48) is impressive for a Summit League team, but they went 1-6 in those games with the lone win occurring at Tennessee. It’s nice to play those teams, but if you don’t win any of the games, it doesn’t do a whole lot for the RPI.

Jackrabbits notch milestone 20th win

COLLEGIAN PHOTO BY AARON STONEBERGER

Jill Young drives in the lane against the Coyotes Feb. 13.

COLLEGIAN PHOTO BY AARON STONEBERGER

Katie Lingle attempts a shot in SDSU’s 59-53 loss to USD Feb. 13.

COLLEGIAN PHOTO BY ANDREW TURNER

USD’s Charlie Westbrook blocks Nate Wolters’ shot Feb. 9

Oakland finished last season with an RPI of 53 and an SOS of 142, which is very comparable to ORU this season with an RPI of 46 and an SOS of 158. Oakland received a 13-seed in the tournament. The lowest an at-large selection is selected at is usually a 12-seed, although at-large teams have been seeded at 13 before.

A look at the teams from recent years that were chosen and those that were left out shows some trends in the selection committee’s choices.

2010: Snubbed – Rhode Island (40); IN – Minnesota (62)

2009: Snubbed – San Diego St. (34), Creighton (40); IN – Boston College (60), Arizona (62)

2008: Snubbed – Dayton (30), Illinois St. (37); IN – Oregon (61)

2007: Snubbed – Air Force (29), Missouri St (36), Bradley (39); IN – Stanford (67)

2006: Snubbed – Hofstra (22), Missouri St (24); IN – Alabama (57), Seton Hall (58)

Those snubbed are teams from the Atlantic 10, Mountain West, Missouri Valley and the Colonial — all conferences that have done damage over time in the NCAA Tournament. The Summit League doesn’t carry that aura.

Let’s take a look at the Hofstra résumé from 2006:

RPI: 22, SOS: 129

Record: 24-6 (16-5) (Lost in conference tourney finals)

Top 100 Record: 7-4

Top 50 Record: 3-1

Bad losses: 1 (vs. 223)

While Hofstra in 2006 had all of the good résumé-builders, the SOS is what got them in the end, and allowed teams like Alabama (SOS: 12) to get the nod.

Every team that got snubbed came from a mid-major conference, while those teams that were selected, some with RPI’s 30 to 40 spots worse, came from BCS conferences.

Oral Roberts will likely win out and reach the Summit League final with a 28-5 record and a 4-4 record against the Top 100. A loss in the championship drops them to 28-6 and out of the NCAA Tournament with a spot waiting for them in the NIT.

It won’t get any easier for an at-large in the future with Oral Roberts joining the Southland Conference next season and Nebraska-Omaha on the way to the Summit League.

I had been working in the SDSU sports information office since August of 2007, and had done pretty much all there was to do, so I was ready for a change. I was curious to see how the two jobs would differ, as on any given day, you could work three different events at SDSU. By comparison, a normal NBA schedule only has seven or eight home games a month in a normal season, so I was interested to see how I would keep busy and how you operate with only a couple of games every week/every other week or so.

One of the special things about the Bobcats is that they are owned by Michael Jordan. I was a big time Chicago Bulls fan growing up and I still am, so this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see quite possibly the greatest and most well known athlete ever, and the guy that played such a huge part in shaping my sports life as a kid.

The closest thing that I could compare a NBA game day to is the Summit League Tournament in Sioux Falls. For a Tournament game, I would generally get to the arena at 11 a.m. and be there until the fourth and final game of the day was done at around 11:30 p.m. It is much the same in the NBA, but instead of four games in one day, it is only one. A game day for me goes from 10 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. with a multitude of activities going on.

Setting up about a dozen or so stat monitors throughout Time Warner Cable Arena as well as placing the seating cards down for the media takes up hours before the game. The media covering each game is just incredible. For a normal game, there will be about 70 media credentials given out to TV/radio/newspaper/game day workers. However, that number reached over 100 when the New York Knicks came into town on Jan. 24th, which was even more than when the Miami Heat played Charlotte in December.

Some games may not pique your interest at all, such as the Bobcats vs. the Houston Rockets. But when you get to walk among the players and coaches before and after the game, it has a special feel and an opportunity to see the legends of the game as well as the future greats.

For instance, the Atlanta Hawks are a pretty good team with a few All-Star caliber players, but the real treat was walking past former Hawks player Dominique Wilkins who currently serves as an analyst for their TV broadcast. He is someone who went head-to-head against Jordan in numerous slam dunk competitions and was one of the most spectacular high flyers in history. The Houston Rockets may not have any players that you would seek out for an autograph, but their head coach is former Boston Celtic great, and Minnesota native Kevin McHale. The Golden State Warriors have a couple of exciting, young players, including Stephen Curry. It is surreal to me that just a couple of years ago, I was watching Curry lead Davidson to within one victory of the Final Four and now I get to see him in person. Same goes for Cleveland Cavaliers rookie point guard Kyrie Irving, who should turn out to be a future All-Star.

What may turn out to be the biggest learning experience of the entire internship is the cultural impact.

I have talked and spent time with a greater variety of people from numerous different backgrounds just in the past two weeks than I have for the first 20 plus years of my life, which is something that you just cannot experience back at home.

I grew up less than 10 miles west of Sioux Falls, which is the largest city in the state by nearly 100,000 people. I spent the next six years in Brookings, which hovers around the 20,000 mark. The entire state is a little over 800,000. Compare that with Charlotte that has a metro population that more than doubles the state of South Dakota, and it’s a whole new ballgame.

Obviously most of the other interns with the Bobcats are closer to home than I am. Of the 30 interns, one is from Michigan, one is from Kansas, there is a handful from the northeast, but most are from around the Virginia and Carolinas area. Not surprising and also one of the reasons why I thought getting the position was a long shot, but it raises an interesting point. Most people don’t veer far from home.

The old motto at SDSU is that, “You can go anywhere from here.” I am sure you can look at many examples of this throughout SDSU’s long history, but when looking at the people that I have dealt with throughout the years, they seem to follow a similar pattern. They live within a few hours in either direction of Brookings, go to school for four to seven years and then head right back on home or stay in the area. It is easy just to stay near to the place that you have known your entire life with all of your family and friends. Even though I have taken the long journey to the east coast and have just stated how everyone stays close to home, ironically, my dream job would be to work for the Minnesota Vikings, the closest thing to a big time professional team that we have in this area in the biggest pro league in the country.

Can you be happy and achieve all of the goals that you have by staying close to home? Absolutely. But for me to reach the goals that I have for myself, there is not much of an opportunity back at home. You only go around this world once, and I have decided that the comforts of home are not a good enough excuse to stop me from having a career that seemed unthinkable to the 11-year-old me.

My internship ends at the end of April when the regular season ends and I have no idea where I will go from here. I can guarantee you that two months ago, I never would have thought that I would be writing this column from North Carolina. That’s the fun part about life. You never know where you are going to be or what you are going to be doing in the future. But I am sure about one thing. Whatever I do, I am going to be having fun doing it.

Look at the things in your life that you like to do and you don’t like to do and you will have a correlation between being good at the things you like and not being very good at the things that you don’t like.

The most polarizing figure in sports right now is Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. People can’t understand how a team can go 6-1 with a quarterback who doesn’t throw the ball 30 times a game or throw for 300 yards a game. When someone comes and does something we have never seen before, people can’t wrap their head around it.

Editors’ Note: Sports columnist Travis Kriens hosts a TV show, The Sports Lounge on SDSU channel 2, which airs numerous times during the week. He also co-hosts a radio show on KSDJ on Tuesdays from 6-9 p.m.

“It has never been done before,” they say.

“It just can’t work over the long haul,” when asked to explain why Denver went from 1-4 to 7-5.

People expect him to fail at some point. They also want him to fail so they can say, “I told you so.”

No one apparently saw the two games that Tebow started at the end of last season. He was 16-for-29 for 308 yards in a 17 point comeback win over the Houston Texans, 24-23. He also threw it 36 times in a five-point loss to the San Diego Chargers. Does that make you feel any better that he threw the ball 60-plus times combined in two games?

Tebow threw three interceptions in 65 attempts in two starts last season compared to one interception in his first 143 attempts this season. Rookie quarterbacks tend to turn the ball over through the air more often than their veteran counterparts, which is no surprise. For those who watched the Broncos vs. Vikings game, you know the two Christian Ponder interceptions led to 10 Denver points, including the game winning field goal, and were deep in Vikings territory. If you have the running game and defense to not have to have your young QB throw the ball 30 times a game and limit your turnovers, isn’t that the smart thing to do?

How frustrating is it to see your team  have a first and goal at the five and throw it three straight times ,only to settle for a field goal or when you can’t get five yards running the ball three times? You will never see that from Denver.

The Denver defense has gotten the shaft during the last month and a half because their turnaround coincides with Tebow taking over the offense. If you are going to say the defense is the number one reason for Denver’s improvement, which I would accept, you also have to blame the same defense for giving up 45 points at home to Detroit in their only loss since the second Sunday in October and 30 points to the Vikings, who were without their best running back and second-best receiver.

The other polarizing figure in sports is Lebron James. He plays well for three quarters only to play poorly in the fourth quarter during the NBA Finals. Tebow does the exact opposite. He plays poorly for three quarters only to play his best when it means the most. Both are criticized for two different things.

Winning is all that matters. Coaches at the big time colleges are paid to win, not graduate their players, just like Tebow is paid to win games, not throw for yards. Case in point, the 44 percent graduation rate that Bob Stoops at Oklahoma had last year, as mentioned in my column last week. If you switch his winning percentage (80 percent) with his graduation rate (44 percent), he would be fired in no less than two seasons.

If you switch Tebow’s throwing percentage (45 percent) with his winning percentage as a starter (77 percent), would you feel better about him and his future?

Anything short of a Super Bowl win in his career will not shut up the Tebow doubters. Any time Denver wins or loses the rest of the season, whether it is the regular season or playoffs, Tebow will be talked about as the main cause.

The spin you will hear from the media now is the Broncos won’t be able to win in the playoffs even though you will hear how the playoffs comes down to running the ball, stopping the run and playing well defensively—all things Denver has shown to be very good at recently. The great thing about sports not called FBS football is we will see if the “experts” are right because most of them have been wrong thus far.

I predict Denver will beat Chicago next week and the Raiders will lose at Green Bay. They will be 8-5 with a one-game lead in the division with three games to play. Get ready for the playoffs.

It was reported as early as Nov. 18 that it was all but a foregone conclusion that Meyer would be the Ohio State coach next season and the ensuing week or denials were child-like.

Editors’ Note: Sports columnist Travis Kriens hosts a TV show, The Sports Lounge on SDSU channel 2, which airs numerous times during the week. He also co-hosts a radio show on KSDJ on Tuesdays from 6-9 p.m.

Meyer was taken off of the broadcasting team with Dave Pasch and former Ohio State linebacker Chris Spielman for this past weekend’s Ohio State vs. Michigan game. Instead, ESPN said that he would be back in the studio in Connecticut. He later asked and was granted the entire weekend off.

Even earlier in the year when Jim Tressel was fired, Meyer said “I am committed to ESPN and will not pursue any coaching opportunities this fall.”

This ended up not being true as Ohio State still has a bowl game left and talks between Meyer and Ohio State began before the last regular season game of the season.

Meanwhile, fellow ESPN analyst Bob Davie took the head coaching job at New Mexico and still called two games this past weekend. While they were not games involving his future employer, Davie worked nonetheless and didn’t ask for the weekend off even after accepting a new coaching job.

If Meyer was telling the truth and there was not deal in place the week leading up to the Ohio State vs. Michigan game that he was supposed to call, then what is the problem in working that game? And why would ESPN move Meyer to the studio when he has been on the road the entire season and done a tremendous job as an analyst? It seems to me that Meyer would be better served and utilized in the broadcast booth rather than in a studio hundreds or thousands of miles away from the games he would be asked to comment on.

The best part was, as ESPN.com reported the story, their website said, “Meyer accepts Ohio State job, sources say.” You need sources to tell you that one of your employees is taking another job? You would think the employee (Meyer) would tell the employer (ESPN) if he was taking another job and not have to hear about from “sources”.

Meyer said at his introductory press conference on Monday that one of the reasons why he stepped away from coaching at the end of last season was that he “didn’t like the state of college football and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

I hate to tell ya Urban, but it has gotten a whole lot worse since you have been gone. Read up on the problems at Miami, Penn State and your current school Ohio State and tell me that you want to be a part of that.

Looking at his contract, Meyer will be paid $100,000 for a graduation success rate of 70-79.99 percent and $150,000 if the “GSR” is 80 percent or higher. The GSR is the percentage of athletes who graduate within six years after starting college, excluding students who transfer to other schools. He will also be paid $100,000 if the yearly academic progress rate is between 990-999, while his compensation increases to $150,000 if the “APR” is 1,000 or above.

Meanwhile, Meyer will earn $150,000 for a BCS bowl game appearance and $250,000 if Ohio State makes the National Championship game.

It seems clear to me that when it comes to the success that Meyer could/will have at Ohio State, it will be more important, in more than one way, what happens on the field compared to what happens in the classroom. Ohio State football had a graduation rate of 63 percent, which is good for ninth-highest in the 12-team Big 10.

Why does Meyer get a bonus for something that should be expected of him, which is graduating his players? There should not be any extra incentive for coaches to have better academic marks. I don’t see anywhere in his contract where Meyer has to give back money if he doesn’t reach those academic marks.

When Meyer first came to Florida in 2005, the graduation rate was at 80 percent. When he left in 2010, it dropped to 69 percent. Meyer’s players also had issues with the law while at Florida, with over 25 of his players either were arrested or faced charges in his six years in Gainesville.

Lane Kiffin had a similar clause in his short-lived stay at Tennessee. $40,000 for academic plateaus, while he would have received four times that amount for a National Championship appearance and seven times that amount if he won.

One of Bob Stoops’ old contracts at Oklahoma, signed in 2005, states that he receives the same amount of money ($60,000) if he is named national coach of the year as he would if he graduates 85 percent or better of his players.

Guess which school had the lowest graduation rate of all BCS schools in 2011? Oklahoma at a meager 44 percent. San Jose State is the only FBS school with a lower rate, 42 percent, while the FBS average is at 67 percent. Compared with the rest of the university, all students at Oklahoma have a graduation rate of 62 percent.

Is Stoops disciplined in any way for not graduating even half of his players? Absolutely not. If Stoops’ winning percentage was like his graduation rate, I guaranteed he wouldn’t last more than three seasons at Oklahoma and that may be a conservative estimate.

Ohio State will pay Meyer a stipend of $1,200 a month, which will be used to cover costs for two automobiles, as well as full golf membership at a mutually agreed upon golf course. You would think that $4 million a year would be enough that the university wouldn’t have to chip in an extra $14,000 a year towards a vehicle.

This is just one big-time college coach at one big-time university. It is like this at most other BCS schools as well. Reading through numerous head coaching contracts, they were virtually the same. Each got bonuses for conference championships and bowl game appearances. A stipend for automobiles was also prevalent in each one too. Congratulations to the first coach that set that precedent.

To the fans of Ohio State football, I hope Urban Meyer coaches better than he handled this situation.

Editors’ Note: Sports columnist Travis Kriens hosts a TV show, The Sports Lounge on SDSU channel 2, which airs numerous times during the week. He also co-hosts a radio show on KSDJ on Tuesdays from 6-9 p.m.

There is so much still going on with the situation at Penn State that it is hard to keep track of it all, but one thing is clear: none of it looks good for Jerry Sandusky.

The first public allegations against Sandusky was in 1998 when he admitted to hugging a boy while showering with him. Since that time, he has made $456,000 from his charity. The Second Mile, a nonprofit organization that serves the youth of Pennsylvania, only stopped paying Sandusky his annual consulting fee of $57,000 in 2009 after they decided it wasn’t a good idea to have Sandusky camp out with young boys. He also continues to collect his monthly pension from Penn State of just under $59,000 a year since he retired in 1999 on top of the nearly $150,000 he received as a lump sum. This is unless he is convicted of these 40 charges.

The Second Mile’s president and CEO Jack Raykovitz, who has since resigned, was paid $1.3 million since 1998 and his wife, Katherine Genovese, who also worked for the charity, was paid just over $900,000.

The attorney that reviewed the 1998 incident on behalf of Penn State was also primary council to The Second Mile. Wendell Courtney is the man’s name and I will go out on a limb and say he was not impartial. He stayed with Penn State until last year and was still with the charity until early last week when he withdrew. I wonder why?

The lawyer representing Sandusky is 63-year-old Joe Amendola. When Amendola was in his late 40’s in the mid 1990’s, he impregnated a 17-year-old named Mary Iavasile. She gave birth right before her 18th birthday. The two later married in February 2003. Mary is now 32 years old. The age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16 years old. I can’t think of anybody better to represent Sandusky than someone that has a history of sexual contact with minors themselves.

When Sandusky was arraigned on Nov. 5, he was let go on $100,000 bail and is back at home like nothing ever happened.  The judge who made that decision was Leslie Dutchcot. She also volunteers for Sandusky’s charity. Prosecutors requested bail of $500,000 and that Sandusky be required to wear a leg monitor. A criminal attorney is quoted as saying that he has never had a client with Sandusky’s charges be released on unsecured bail.

You may have seen former Penn State player and current analyst Matt Millen cry when speaking about the situation on ESPN. This hits closer to home for Millen than most because of his connection with the school. Something you might not know is that Millen is a member of the board of directors for The Second Mile. You wouldn’t know that, however, because The Second Mile has removed the lists of all its board members from its website. Millen and his wife gave between $10,000 and $19,999 to the charity between September 1st, 2009 and August 31st, 2010.

It is said that you are innocent until proven guilty. I would like to throw that out the window. With so much information against Sandusky at this point, he is guilty until he can prove none of these incidents happened.Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini had it right when he said after Saturday’s game at Penn State “I didn’t think the game should’ve been played.”
Just watching the game, I can’t remember a time when the outcome of the game meant less. There were over 100,000 in attendance and how many of them could have had football be the number thing on their mind after all the transpired the previous week?

People were crying, but were they crying for the right reasons?

Were they crying because Joe Paterno wasn’t the head coach of Penn State anymore or because innocent kids were raped and the entire situation was covered up for at least a decade and probably more?

Just talking to college students in Brookings, seeing comments made on Twitter and hearing Penn State students being interviewed about the injustice of Paterno getting fired just don’t get it. This is bigger and more serious than coaching football or anything that resembles the game on the field.

Riot on the streets if you want. It won’t bring your football coach back. Pray for the victims too. But just know that won’t erase the life-long damage done to so many kids by one man for years.

A volleyball season that took a turn for the worse halfway through ended on a sour note Saturday night at Frost Arena as the USD defeated SDSU 3-1 in the final match of the season for both squads.

The lone set that the Jacks did win was the second set in which they battled back from as many as six points down to win 26-24.

“We did a good job at some points in the match, but when we were able to get our middles going for awhile, that certainly got us back in the match,” first year head coach Phil McDaniel said. “When we stopped paying attention to our defensive assignments, that’s when we really got into trouble.”

Jackrabbits outside hitter Kelly Herrmann attacks the block set up by South Dakota’s Tahnee Reed (10) and Tori Kroll (9) on Nov. 12 at Frost Arena. The Coyotes won the match in four sets. / Collegian Photo by Aaron Stoneberger

An 8-0 run midway through set four set the stage for USD to close the match out leading 21-14. However, SDSU came back to tie the set at 24 and had three set points in which it could have forced a fifth set, but the Coyotes prevailed 31-29.

“We saw a lot of fight in our team,” McDaniel said. “For us, it was just a matter of too little, too late. We started too late in our fight to stay in the match.”

SDSU was led by junior Kelli Fiegen with her 18 kills and .444 hitting percentage. The reigning Summit League Player of the Year ends the season with a team-best 422 kills.

“She’s phenomenal,” McDaniel said. “When we can get her the ball and have her play in the space where other teams can’t, she can do a lot of good things for us. It’s a matter of us being able to defensively transition so that we can get her good, quality swings.”

It was also senior night as Brookings native Ellyce Youngren and Emily Palmer played the final match of their SDSU careers. Youngren wrapped up her time at SDSU 13th on the all-time kills list with 1,144, including 11 in her final match, while Palmer finished with 740 kills as a defensive specialist.

“They played a great match and did a lot of good things for us,” McDaniel said. “Ellyce is such a big blocking threat on the right and Emily has been fantastic for us all year. We are certainly going to miss those two. They bring a lot on the court as well as off the court.”

When you consider all the factors, it was not a surprise that it was the loudest and most amped crowd of the year as 813 fans was good enough for the second largest crowd of the season.

“The crowd was awesome,” Palmer said, after her final match. “I’ve never in my career had a crowd like that. The energy was so high, it was awesome to play in.”

After being picked to finish second in the Summit League behind North Dakota State, the high expectations for SDSU were not met as they lost nine of their last 10 and 15 of their last 17 after starting the season 11-4, including a 3-0 mark in conference. The Jacks finished with a 13-20 overall record and finished ninth in the 10-team Summit League with a 5-13 mark.