For those of you who believe all of the NCAA allegations to be gospel, truth and absolute, consider this story today out of Norman, Oklahoma:

“An NCAA appeals committee partially overturned its ruling in the infractions case involving former Sooners quarterback Rhett Bomar.

The NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee said Oklahoma should not have been found guilty of separate violations for failing to detect football players were working at a Norman, Okla., car dealership and failing to monitor those students’ employment.”

The NCAA had originally vacated the eight wins the Sooners earned in 2005. Those wins have been reinstated.

If you find yourself with a little extra time Saturday night, the biggest regular season basketball game of the year (sorry Duke/UNC) will be on ESPN.

Memphis and Tennessee, the number 1 and 2 teams in the country, square off and for Memphis, it’s a chance to finish the regular season undefeated and will likely be their last big test before the start of the NCAA season. For Tennessee, it’s a chance to show that they’re deserving of their ranking and not just there by process of elimination.

What I like about this game is the matchup between the coaches. The ultra-slick John Calipari, who has managed to recruit kids to Memphis and turn that program into a perennial powerhouse (in a laughably bad conference) versus the Massachusetts motormouth Bruce Pearl, who’s taken some degree of joy in being the SEC’s resident antagonizer. While I think Calipari is a better coach, I think Pearl is a much better motivator and can’t typically get more out of less.

Memphis has been incredibly tough at home and played a pretty good non-conference schedule. But I don’t think there is nearly as much of a home court advantage here than if they were playing in Knoxville. The FedEx Forum isn’t some cozy on-campus arena where the fans are on top of the players, it’s a major arena and I think that is to the venue’s detriment. That being said, that arena will be loud and the atmosphere will be electric.

Earlier this week, Calipari was on PTI and poo-pooed the idea that his team’s glaring weakness is it’s terrible free-throw shooting. He said he didn’t care that all of his team’s were terrible from the charity stripe and said if he evaluated a player and he was looking for the top 25 things in any player, how good of a free throw shooter they were would be 26. A point that is too stupid for words. Think of how many games in the NCAA tournament comes down to free throw shooting. When I hear John Calipari say that he doesn’t care about free throw shooting, it sounds an awful lot like a coach who has never won a national championship.

Despite the fact that I think Memphis has absolutely no chance to win the national championship, I’ll take the Tigers in a close game. I think the athleticism of Memphis will just be too much for Tennessee down the stretch. If Bruce Pearl can figure out a defensive scheme that can bottle Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, they definitely have a much better chance of getting a huge win on the road. Tennessee may have their best success running a 2-3 zone and forcing Rose and Douglas-Roberts to drive and kick out to the perimeter where Memphis is shooting just 33% from beyond the arc, a percentage that doesn’t rank in Division I’s Top 50 teams.

It is safe to assume that whatever recommendation Indiana athletic director Rick Greenspan has for IU president Michael McRobbie, he will issue early tomorrow morning. The Indianapolis Star’s Terry Hutchens reports tonight:

“Indiana University athletic director Rick Greenspan is expected to announce his decision Friday regarding the fate of embattled basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

It was unclear whether Greenspan told the basketball players who gathered at his Assembly Hall office late Thursday whether they will have a new coach for Saturday’s game at Northwestern. The players walked past reporters without commenting.”

Hutchens reported that the players emerged from Greenspan’s office at 7:43 p.m.

You have to assume at this point that Greenspan’s recommendation will be to either terminate or indefinitely suspend Sampson, otherwise a conversation with the players wouldn’t necessarily be prudent.

You’d think, being an NFL draft fiend, that I’d love everything and anything draft-related and the prospect of college football’s best players being tested, interviewed, poked and prodded by NFL execs and coaches would be right up my alley. And the event takes places annually in Indiana? You’d think I’d love this stuff, right? Soaking up each and every 40, bench press and broad jump. Well, you’d be dead wrong.

I hate the NFL combine.

Quick, think of any player that had a great combine that turned out to be a great NFL player. Pretty tough, huh? It’s because there aren’t any. The combine is a test of a player’s football abilities while somehow managing to have very little to do with actually playing football.

As a fan, I have absolutely no interest in how my team’s potential first round pick (and I pray it’s not an offensive or defensive lineman) looks in a tight-fitting t-shirts and a pair of shorts. What interests me is the player’s college career, how he looks on films, how he plays and how he practices.

Throughout history, there has been very little correlation between a player having a great combine and being a great player. In fact, it more often than not works in the inverse. Players like Mike Mamula and Matt Jones were workout warriors and NFL flame-outs (at least Mamula was, Jones is on his way there).

And then the NFL is arrogant enough to think that the whole of the football-crazy public wants to watch Early Doucet run a 40 inside the RCA Dome? As someone who has watched 20 minutes of combine coverage live, I can tell you that if you’re not watching it, you’re not missing a thing. The stuff is really dry. Think one of those woodworking shows on PBS on Sunday mornings. It’s awful to watch.

So if you’re expecting takes and opinions on what happens in Indianapolis this week, you may want to go elsewhere. Fanhouse is doing great things with their combine coverage.

So I arrived back to the newsroom today after covering a thrilling meeting about the start of spring break and what should I find but the press kit for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Inside was a CD-Rom full of stills and other production goodies but what I didn’t expect to find was A WHIP! You heard me right, LucasFilms is arming movie reviewers and other press folks with facsimile whips. Of course I was eager to test out the aforementioned whip so I cheerily went into the morgue (the place where one can find back issues of newspapers) and cracked it around a bit. The early trials produced few achievements other than a sizable welt on my right hand. Undeterred, I trekked into our warehouse, that used to house our printing press and began to play around with it. After many attempts, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whip is far too long and not wound tight enough to actually give that trademark Indy crack but it was pretty cool nonetheless.

Bottom Line favs Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman have announced the nominees for their First Annual Golden Clog awards for the best and worst in food this year.

The pair will present the awards during the South Beach Food and Wine Festival later this month.

The greatest part about all of this isn’t really the nominees but instead the varying categories and who they honor or poke fun at.

For example:

THE “ROCCO” AWARD — for worst career move by a talented chef. Obviously a jab at Rocco DiSpirito, who after his short-lived reality show tanked his career and any culinary credibility he had. The nominees are: Gordon Ramsay for the cruel and pointless freak show that is Hell’s Kitchen; David Burke for the “Hooters in a Hula skirt” non-charms of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square; Tyler Florence for Applebee’s, Applebee’s, Applebee’s.

For the complete list of nominees and the reasons they’ve been nominated, visit Serious Eats.

In other foodie-related news, Robert Sietsma has a great article today in the Village Voice about his trip to a taping of Iron Chef America and how utterly fake it is. I always presumed a level of deception when watching the show (I mean how is someone going to come up with a five-course tasting menu based on ingredients they don’t know, while coordinating that vision with a pair of sous chefs?) but the article points out how much of the show is completely fabricated and ridiculous, including the Chef stand-ins they use for Iron Chefs not competing at that taping.

Mike Luckovich’s political cartoon in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Virginia Tech Athletic Department is encouraging its fans to wear Northern Illinois colors to their home tip against Georgia Tech Saturday:

“All fans attending the game are encouraged to wear red and black to show their support for the Northern Illinois University community. Many universities, schools, groups and individuals reached out to the Hokie Nation after the tragedy of April 16^th. Our university was comforted by the outpouring of support from the nation and the world. This is a chance for all members of the Virginia Tech family to show solidarity and concern for all of those members in the NIU family.”

Courtesy of Serious Eats:

Los Angeles-based artist Victoria Reynolds specializes in painting detailed pictures of meat. When have viscera ever looked so beautiful? You can view and buy her paintings at Richard Heller Gallery (the above bacon painting is $5,000 if you’re interested.

I love meat as much as anybody else and I love all things pork and pork related (with the exception of deli-sliced ham and ham in general, which I find terrible beyond words) but the day that I spend 5 grand on a painting of bacon, I hope someone has the decency to smother me with a pillow in my sleep.

Wanna watch Tom Brady’s high school recruiting video?