College Football Weekly Notes

-Courety of the National Football Foundation

Boise State and Oregon Plan Overseas Game:
-Boise State and Oregon are looking at the possibility of playing the first major college football game ever in China in 2009. The NCAA already has given permission to play a contest there, and Oregon officials are looking at sites, logistics, funding, and a possible television package before extending contracts. Officials from Oregon athletics, top administration and the UO Warsaw School of Marketing have arranged for a Nov. 2007 meeting in China with Chinese sports and government officials to discuss early arrangements.

Two-Minute Drill:
Stanford's 2007 football team and coaching staff joined Joe Montana (Notre Dame) and College Football Hall of Famer Steve Young (BYU) in celebrating the life of the late coaching great Bill Walsh (San Jose State). The service was held last Thursday at the Stanford Memorial Church on the Palo Alto, Calif., campus. 2005 College Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State) also attended.

Florida State football student-athletes participated in and visited with 50 youngsters with disabilities at the Able Trust Youth Leadership Forum in Tallahassee... Indiana is wearing "Don't Quit 13" logos on its helmets in 2007 to memorialize late head coach Terry Hoeppner... Rice and Boston College will be wearing new uniforms this season... UC Davis is on the verge of first first- ever sellout of season tickets... Southern California will participate in the 15th annual "Touchdown for Youth" program with the Los Angeles Sports Council Foundation. $30 donations provide one youngster a ticket to a home game and refreshments... Purdue chemistry professor Dr. Harry Morrison discovered several wooden "nesting dolls" (or matryoshkas) with Purdue student-athletes QB Curtis Painter, RB Kory Sheets, WR Dorien Bryant, RB Jaycen Taylor, and TE Dustin Keller in a Moscow hobby shop... Southern California student-athlete Ben Malcolmson is writing a daily blog during Trojans' pre-2007 practices... Washington trainers and sports nutritionists have added chilled chocolate milk to the Huskies' post-practice fluid replacement menu along with sports drinks and ice water... The watchlist for the Manning Award, presented by the AllState Sugar Bowl, has been released.

Washington State has added Portland State to the Cougars' 2008 schedule... Syracuse and USC have scheduled a home-and-home series for the 2011 and '12 campaigns. The Trojans have also agreed to a home- and-home series with Boston College starting in 2013... Oklahoma and Cincinnati have scheduled first-ever meetings in 2008 in Norman and in '10 at Cincinnati's Paul Brown Stadium.

California officials have utilized two government agencies and geological surveying groups and find no active faults under the proposed Student-Athlete High Performance Center adjacent to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. Cal development officials also are en route to a final goal of $100 million for facility additions and Memorial Stadium overhauls... Syracuse is doing an "in-concept" football stadium study for a possible replacement for the 25-year-old Carrier Dome... McNeese State has utilized volunteers from the community the last two weekends to finish painting Cowboy Stadium in Lake Charles, La... Indiana has installed Sportexe Turf at the John Mellencamp Pavilion for football practices... North Texas continues serious discussions and drawing-board options to construct a 30,000-expandable-seat football facility to replace 55-year-old Fouts Field.

1991 Jim Thorpe Award winner and All- America DB Terrell Buckley has returned to Florida State as a student assistant coach working with the secondary and attending classes at FSU... Lincoln (Pa.) has named Olabaniji Abanishe as its new head coach for the 2007 exploratory year for football. The university is reviving the program after a 47-year absence from the gridiron... Duke director of athletics Joe Alleva has been reappointed as director of athletics by a five-year peer review administrative committee... Longtime associate AD at Alabama and former Troy AD Johnny Williams is retiring from Alabama to work with a marketing and promotions company in Tuscaloosa, Ala... Mike Montoro has been named West Virginia's director of football communications.

The Big Ten Network has completed its game- day broadcast talent lineup, and the group includes Roger Twibell, Mike Tomczak, Mark Neely, Jim Kelly, Richard Baldinger, Scott Graham, Derrick Walker, Ron Thulin, and Butler By'not'e... The Southland Conference has partnered with Cox Sports Television for six live telecasts in 2007... Fenway Sports Group has extended its marketing agreement with Boston College athletics for 12 years... XOS Technologies, Inc. has re-launched the official athletic Web sites for Idaho and Louisiana-Monroe... Central Michigan and Daktronics have completed an agreement for all-new scoreboard installation at CMU's Kelly/Shorts Stadium... Veoh Networks (Veoh.com) and Collegiate Images have entered a joint project dedicated to internet televising of college football games beginning in Sept. 2007... Dave Flemming will handle football play-by- play radio duties for Stanford this season... Fresno State alumnus Jordan Christensen joins 36-year veteran Bill Woodward (play-by-play) as the Bulldogs' radio analyst for 2007... A grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) will allow Maryland and South Carolina to preserve a rare piece of filmed memorabilia - a 16mm version of the Nov. 6, 1948, UM-SC contest. There is only one known copy of the encounter... CSTV has agreed to telecast four NCAA Division II football tussles nationally in '07... Montana and Learfield Sports have joined to form "Grizzly Sports Properties"... Rutgers has joined Sports Services in providing online football credentialing for 2007.

The 2007 Motor City Bowl in Detroit, Mich., has special $10 Stocking Stuffer tickets available for such groups as the Boy Scouts and Detroit city schools if individuals or groups wish to make charitable donations.

Retired Colorado head coach Eddie Crowder has received the 44th annual Citation of Honor from the Football Writers Association of America. The honor recognizes coaches for "long and honorable careers in intercollegiate athletics, and, specifically, contributions to football"... Former Davey O'Brien Award recipient QB Joe Hamilton of Georgia Tech received his undergraduate degree in management last week in Atlanta after returning to school... Inaugural U.S. Marine Sports Hall of Fame (2001) member and Ohio State standout Frank Goettge was remembered at the seventh annual Hall of Fame induction Friday in Quantico, Va. Goettge fought in both World Wars I and II and was killed during action on Guadalcanal Island in the Pacific.

The NCAA officially has changed the name of all NCAA Division I-AA football competition and teams to the Football Championship Subdivision. The FCS and FBS were one-year trial names in 2006- 07 football... The NCAA Division I Board of Directors also turned down an appeal from 30 member institutions to overturn last May's complete text- messaging ban to prospective student-athletes and reaffirmed its improved academic, graduation rates and progress procedures enacted in 2004... The NCAA Division I Board of Directors has enacted a four- year moratorium on new memberships in DI, but it will not affect 20 universities in the midst of seven-year provisional NCAA division movements.

Ticket City.com has rated the five current "toughest" tickets in 2007 FBS ranks. They include Notre Dame at Penn State, Sept. 8; Ohio State at Michigan, Nov. 17; USC at Notre Dame, Oct. 20; Notre Dame at Michigan, Sept. 15; Boston College at Notre Dame, Oct. 13.

Former Notre Dame PK Harry Oliver, 47, whose 51-yard field goal against Michigan in 1980 gave the Fighting Irish one of their seven last- play victories in the school's 120-year football history, died on Aug. 8 in Cincinnati, Ohio... Ed Brown, 78, quarterback for San Francisco's undefeated 1951 team and NFL champion Chicago Bears in 1956, died last week.