Linking Up: March 4, 2011

(Editor's Note: I'm going to try to make the "Linking Up" posts into something closer to a daily feature. This might help for passing along quick-hitters and items of interest that I don't have time to write about more extensively. I don't want this to steal time from my more in-depth articles, so consider this a trial run.)

*Stewart Mandel of SI.com argues that the onus is on university presidents to "clean up" bad behavior off the field in college football. I hope to write more on this later, but let me start by saying that I thought the SI's expose on thuggish college football players was bunk of the highest order. I'll allow Spencer Hall and Ty Duffy to explain.

*The Solid Verbal podcast tackles the new allegations against Oregon with Bryan Fischer of CBSSports.com. Co-host Dan Rubenstein, a noted Duck homer, told me via Twitter that he actually found the conversation "reassuring." Again, I hope to write something more involved here later, but, at first glance, if UO really did pay this joker $25,000 for his "scouting services," that should be a damning indictment of the athletic department's competency. Either way, the Ducks come off looking bad here.

*Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports says today is close to all-or-nothing in the NFL labor talks.

*The whole Charlie Sheen "winning" meme might have set a record for jumping the shark.

*I came across this site yesterday which has some intriguing stuff on projecting college football records. I think I'm even more interested in the methodology than I am the actual results.