Big Blue Nation Linkapalooza: Butch Davis Edition

Butch Davis has been fired as head football coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels one year and a few days after the NCAA began investigating his program.  Davis lasted longer than either Jim Tressel at Ohio St. or Bruce Pearl at Tennessee, but met with the same fate, eventually.

Dawg Sports asks, quite reasonably, why now?

One has to wonder what exactly accumulated in the past few days that had not accumulated in the preceding months. It's hard to imagine a worse time to jettison your college football coach, what with fall practice a week away. Really, it's hard to justify the decision unless the UNC board discovered something new and troubling, or had to line up the financing to make a move now. Either way, I imagine UNC fans will view this as the school writing off an entire season. At least that's how I would see it if the same sort of lightning bolt struck out of a clear blue sky in Athens.

Indeed.  Next up:  Chip Kelly of Oregon?

Here's your links:

• Gregg Doyel calls for Chip Kelly's firing.
  I think I have to agree with him. Substitute "Worldwide Wes" for Willie Lyles, and can you imaging Calipari surviving UK making a $25,000 payment to WWW for useless recruiting info and a blue chip player? Not. Even.

• UNC makes tough, but right choice by firing Davis.
  There are some questions that are tough for Davis to answer. Ultimately, when a school gets taken down this hard, it has to fire the coach. It may not be fair in that the coach may have very little direct culpability, but when you have a catastrophe like this, you can't expect to keep your job.

• Turgeon vs Calipari Battle Shaping Up in Quest For the Harrison Twins

• Perry Ellis is shaping up to be quite a recruiting battle.
  With a top three of Kansas, UK, and Duke, it is truly an impressive list.

• Vacated 22, Vacated 19.
  The 2011 BCS championship score?

• Calipari is still hot on the trail.
  Both Calipari and Pitino are recruiting Nerlens Noel hard.

• This game ought to draw a crowd.

• Is the first line of this article deliberately misleading?
  You have to read way down near the end to find out that Downing, who is from Kansas, is actually playing football at Georgetown College in Kentucky. And the opening line is:

  A Kentucky football player is accused of punching a KU student. The incident happened last month. 22 year-old Joshua Downing was in court on Tuesday to face the charges.

  This lady had me searching UK rosters for 10 minutes trying to find that name.  I wonder how many people will assume, like I did, she means UK?  I think this is wrong.

• Getting your picture taken with Erin Andrews cannot be a bad thing.

• DeQuin Evans to the Bengals?
  Cool.

• The NFL lockout is over. Time to get to work.

• John Wall showing why he was the #1 pick in Las Vegas.
  Via Anthony Wireman.

• So who will be the next "face" of Kentucky football?

• We've all heard about the Harrison twins.
  Jody Demling gives us a lot more on them.

• It's the Pac-12 network now!
  Why not?

• UCLA guard Jerime Anderson suspended after arrest - ESPN Los Angeles
  Uh oh.

• Because of the recent NCAA violations by LSU, Miles seems to be without a buyout in his contract.

• Butch Davis finally fired by North Carolina.
  You knew this was coming. Too much badness, and UNC had to want to start clean.

• Congratulations to the new Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame inductees.

  The 2011 class includes former UK student-athletes Jeff Abbott (baseball), Pam Browning (women’s basketball), Ilkka Jantti (men’s soccer), Cedric Kauffmann (men’s tennis), Bill Ransdell (football) and former administrator Russell Rice.

• Is Louisville the Big East's Surprise Team for 2011?
  Well, maybe. As long as we beat them, I really don't care.

• Is Calipari using telepathy to communicate with recruits?
  Maybe that explains his success.

• Another Duke vs. Kentucky battle shaping up.
  This time is with Alex Poythress.

• Tennessee's "bump rule" violation is secondary, in most contexts.
  In the context of a blizzard of other violations, I'm not really sure it matters if you call it major or secondary. But I happen to agree it is secondary.

  Sixteen impermissible calls by Kiffin, though, don't sound secondary to me.