(Sun-Times)
From Northwestern University:

EVANSTON, Ill.-Northwestern University Head Football Coach Randy Walker died suddenly Thursday night of an apparent heart attack. He was 52 years old.

“Our deepest sympathies go out to his wife, Tammy, and his two children, Abbey and Jamie,” said NU Director of Athletics Mark Murphy. “This is a devastating loss, not only for our athletic program, but for the entire Northwestern community. Randy truly embraced Northwestern and its mission, and cared deeply for his student-athletes, both on and off the field.”

Walker, who led the Wildcats to a share of the 2000 Big Ten title and a trip to the Alamo Bowl, directed Northwestern to a 14-10 combined Big Ten record the past three years. NU also played in the 2003 Motor City Bowl and the 2005 Sun Bowl, making him the first coach in school history to guide NU to three bowl games.

Walker, who joined the Wildcats in 1999 after a successful nine-year tenure at Miami (Ohio) University, his alma mater, guided Northwestern to a seven-year record of 37-46 (second most wins in NU history) and was ranked 27th on the NCAA’s all-time wins list (96-81-5) for active Division I-A football coaches who have at least five years of I-A coaching experience.

Walker was named the Big Ten’s 2000 Dave McClain Coach of the Year. In the 2006 Sporting News preseason football magazine, Walker was cited as the Big Ten’s best coach. Another magazine, Athlon Sports, cited him as the league’s “most underrated coach.”

A native of Troy, Ohio, Walker departed Miami as the RedHawks’ winningest coach with a 59-35-5 record. Ironically, Northwestern opens its 2006 season with its first-ever trip to Oxford, Ohio, to play Miami in a nationally televised game (ESPNU) on Aug. 31. He graduated from Miami in 1976.

In April of this year, Walker was granted a contract extension through 2011.

Walker was the first Northwestern coach to direct three straight teams to four or more Big Ten wins following this past year’s 5-3 mark. He also was the first coach in over a century to record four six-or-more win seasons since C.M. Hollister (1899-02) accomplished the feat.

In October of 2004, Walker was hospitalized for two days with myocarditis, defined as an inflammation of the heart muscle. Myocarditis is most commonly caused by a virus, which doctors believe triggers the initial inflammation.

(Chicago Sun-Times)

The Northwesten Wildcats’ head football coach Randy Walker died late Thursday night of what is thought to be a heart attack. Walker has had some history of medical problems. Two years ago he was hospitalized with a virus that causes an inflammation of the heart muscle. With the Wildcats’ Walker compiled a 37-46 recorded and lead Northwestern to the Sun Bowl last year after a 7-5 season. In 2000 he shared the Big Ten title. We will post more as we learn it.

Update: (Ron Juckett) Here is the article from the Chicago Sun-Times website. This happened after 10 Central Time last night, so reaction is limited.

A group of friends and I were out at the bar having a chat about this upcoming football season when the question was brought up; “If you could have any job in college football, what would it be?” One friend said he would want to be a head coach of a big time program like Notre Dame, another wanted to be an Athletic Director, and the last one said he wanted to be a big time college quarterback. That really wasn’t one of the choices but we let it slide because he was a little bit drunk at the time.

Everyone thought they had it all figured out for me; they thought I wanted to be the next head coach at Penn State (being that I am a huge PSU fan). While that would be a great job, I do not envy the person that has to follow in JoePa’s footsteps. Being that I am a High School Official, it had crossed my mind a few times about someday being good enough to do Division 1. But I shocked them all by saying “I wanted to be the host of ESPN’s College Gameday.”

Seriously, what could be better than going to the greatest venues college football has to offer and talking about the week’s game? All the while you have thousands of fans behind you cheering and booing at your every word, and millions more at home doing the same. You prepare each week by watching football and you might even make appearances on local radio shows to talk about the big games of the week. So in essence instead of paying for a ticket to the best games each week, you get paid to watch them in person, and then talk about it afterwards.

If you are the head coach you have to produce on the field so you have that added pressure, and it is the same when you are the Athletic Director. As host you only have to deal with Lee Corso’s idiotic comments but even those can be ignored. So I ask you loyal readers of In The Bleachers; if you could have any job in the college football world, what would it be? Post your answers in the comment section or just email them to us at inthebleachers@gmail.com. Also don’t forget our podcast will restart next week as we start previewing each conference.

Finally, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit if you are reading, and Kirk we know you are listening because you’ve kindly stated words exactly from last year’s podcasts on Gameday, I can promise you that I would do a better job than Nick Lachey or Desmond Howard. Plus I will work for half the cost, so get in touch with me.

Various media stories are reporting that ESPN is looking to move one of it’s many bowl games to the night of January 7, 2007. That night comes at the end of the NFL’s Wild Card weekend and the total hype network is hoping that you will have room to watch one more game that day.

No word on what game might be moved to after the BCS main games, as the National Championship game would be played later that week in Glendale, AZ, new home of the Fiesta Bowl. Also no word of any conferences that would be willing to take that plunge.

Former CBS sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein has resurfaced at ABC/ESPN. The accomplished sideline beat reporter will join the lead ABC 3:30 crew for the college football season, joining Brad Nessler, Bob Griese, and newcomer from ESPN, Paul Maguire.

While Bernstein did not work the CBS SEC package, she was the #2 NFL sideline reporter, working with Dick Enberg and Dan Dierdorf, and was the lead sideline reporter for the last several years at the Final Four.

She replaces Sam Ryan. Ryan recently left ESPN to go to WCBS-TV in New York. Bernstein started on a national basis covering both football and basketball on ESPN.

As we have known for a few months now, the Houston Bowl, is in financial trouble and may not survive to produce a game in 2006.  The (oddly enough) Houston-based bowl game, played in Reliant Stadium, began play following the 2000 season as the galleryfurniture.com Bowl, before becoming the EV1.net Houston Bowl in 2002.  It has traditionally featured a middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team versus an upper tier Mountain West or Conference USA team, including last season, when TCU defeated Iowa State, 27-24.

Unfortunately for the bowl and its 2005 participants, EV1.net’s affiliation with the matchup expired at the end of 2005 and the non-profit Houston Bowl Foundation, operators of the bowl game, was unable to find the funds to fully pay its two participating programs.  As of right now, TCU and Iowa State are still owed $600,000.  The NCAA has given the Houston Bowl until the end of June to find sponsorships and a television agreement.

Today, David Barron of the Houston Chronicle reports that Lone Star Entertainment, an affiliate of the Houston Texans, is interested in creating a new bowl game to replace the Houston Bowl.  The Big 12, MWC, and CUSA have joined Lone Star Entertainment.  The proposal is expected to be presented to NCAA soon, in hopes that it can gain certification and play its first game in December.

CBSSportsline

University of California QB Steve Levy, who replaced Joe Ayoob at the end of the year and lead the Golden Bears’ season-ending victories over Stanford and Brigham Young last season, was arrested Monday night on assult charges stemming from a bar fight. According to the police reports Levy hit a bar employee in the face with a glass as the employee was trying to break up between Levy and another bar patron. The school has taken action to suspend Levy until all the facts are gathered and they can make a further decision on his future with the team this fall. For the latest on this story check out the Oakland Tribune.

The period between the end of spring practice to the first day of camp can be a long and sometimes boring time period for college football fans. Lately though many fans have turned to a second passion to fill their college football needs, recruiting. Recruiting is a year round process for college coaches but now it is also that way for fans.

Rivals.com and Scout.com are only two of the many recruiting services that fans can sign up for to follow their team or any team through out the year. There they find out which kids like their favorite schools and how their recruiting class ranks each year come LOI day. Some fans become so interested in how many “stars” a certain player is, and when their team get a verbal commitment from someone with only 2 or 3 stars they become disappointed.

The fans need to understand that these services are a business and their evaluations are not the end all. Some services will even demote players that verbal too early so that they can bump others up that has not made their college intentions clear. In the recruiting business, uncertainty sells. That is all well and good but when you have the recruiting guru’s telling kids where to go to school, that is where the problems can occur.

When anyone mentions the name, Tom Lemming, most people around the recruiting world know who he is. He used to run ESPN.com’s recruiting page and now is the head-recruiting guru for CSTV. His actions have opened a few eyes and none more evident than last year with one of the top players in the country Myron Rolle.

Rolle accused Lemming of pushing him to sign with Notre Dame. Rolle went even so far as to say, “Tom Lemming is a huge Notre Dame guy. He kept saying to me, ‘You know they have a great coaching staff. You know Charlie Weis is Mr. NFL. You’re an academic guy. That place is for you.’ Then he killed Florida State. He said, ‘You’re stupid if you go there.’ Um, OK. Thanks.”

This is not the first time Lemming expressed his interest with Notre Dame. In 2002 he swayed ESPN to have Lorenzo “Hollywood” Booker to announce his intentions live on LOI day. At the time Booker was the #1 recruit in the country and all signs pointed to him landing with the Irish. Well that was not the case as Booker chose Florida State over the Irish. The look of pain and anger on the face of Lemming was so clear. He was so upset that he barely could talk after the announcement.

I want to set the record straight; I do not think Notre Dame likes that Lemming pushes kids to go to school there. Some recruits seem to be turned off when Lemming does this so it is not a good recruiting tool for the Irish. But the Notre Dame and the NCAA needs to start keeping a good eye on these so call recruiting experts such as Lemming. The kids have a hard enough decision on their own and do not need lemmings trying to push their agenda.

According to FightOnState.com, the highly rated WR/S Nick Sukay from Greensburg, PA has chosen to play school for Penn State. He chose the Nittany Lions over Notre Dame and Pittsburgh. This brings the total number of commitments so far for the Nittany Lions to 7 for the 2007 season.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting on it’s website that the Southeastern Conference is now seriously looking at starting it’s own channel by 2009. 2009 is when their current football deal ends with CBS and ESPN and with syndicator Lincoln Financial, formerly Jefferson-Pilot. This would be similar in content as the Big 10’s channel for content, a mix of games that used to be in syndication, sports not heavily covered and non sports programming.

No word on whether this would be regional or national at this point, but you can clearly see how the conferences are looking at promotion in the future, something that would become essential if the Big Ten Channel is a success.