Jimmy Clausen: Who Said What On Twitter?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Everyone loves to hate Notre Dame. An Irish quarterback who falls to No. 48 in the NFL draft gives many reason to feel better about themselves, they think.

The anti-Jimmy Clausen sentiment rivals the hate for Tim Tebow and anyone who's ever played basketball at Duke. But not everyone on Twitter was celebrating Clausen's surprising slide. Here's a sampling:

+ @darrenrovell1: "Clausen's guarantee will be about $2.6M. If he went 8th (as Kiper had) would have made about $22.6M."

+ @TheBigLead: "I know people lamented Clausen falling, but this is a great spot. Good RBs, good WRs ... if he starts, he'll win more than Bradford."

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+ @bomani_jones: "bad news, jimmy clausen--after steve smith, i'm not sure any of the panthers receivers are better than floyd or tate."

+ @gamecocksblog: "ESPN just COMPLETELY glossed over Taylor Mays pick to gush over Clausen and send it to commercial?? Weak."

+ @BamaBeat: "Never understood the Jimmy Clausen hype. Didn't understand it in Knoxville when fans were going nuts for him. Don't understand it now."

+ @jemelehill: "As for Jimmy Clausen. Sure he's privately upset, but he's in a better situation than Tebow. Sometimes a step back is 3 steps 4ward."

+ @JoeGoodyMiaHrld: "Charlie Weis' last order of business at Notre Dame: Giving juniors Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate some bad advice. Nice one, Charlie!"

+ @cpanthers: "On being passed over for 47 picks: 'It'll be in the back of my mind every time I step on the field, work out or step into the building.'"

+ @InTheBleachers: "On the bright side, Clausen will have a better career than Bradford as I've said all along. Book that folks."

+ @si_peterking: "That's the perfect team for Clausen, with a good offensive line, no pressure on him at first, and no strong incumbent."

+ @gamecocksblog: "So I'm guessing Erin Andrews didn't make it back out to the Clausen compound, considering we didn't see anything from there? Busy dancing?"

Three Thoughts For Thursday

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

ATLANTA -- I've got some non-football items to address today. I was born here in Atlanta, but only lived here until I was 2 years old.

So mom wants me to visit our old church and maybe even the hospital where I was born. I think I'll also visit our old neighbors, the Pompilios. 

And I need to hit Best Buy because, and let me know what you think of this: The 1TB external hard drive I bought right before I left on this tour doesn't work. I saved some things to it each of the first two or three weeks, and then it just sat unused but well traveled for a month. It must have gotten kicked or something by the baggage handlers.

Anyway, the Best Buy people said they'd do a free exchange, in which case I'd get a new drive but would lose the content on the old one that I'd return to them. Or they'd ship it out for the data to be retrieved for several hundred dollars. It's really a no-win situation. Isn't the point of guaranteeing the products you sell to protect consumers from having to dig deep into their pockets to pay for fixes that shouldn't have to be made in the first place?

But before I set out for the day, here are three quick football takes:

+ Cincinnati can run the table in the Big East and still won't play for the national championship. Boise State's unimpressive win last night at Tulsa was the Broncos' last chance to lose; they're home free the rest of the way. And if Boise's rank in the BCS standings at the end of the season isn't higher than Cincinnati's, a one-loss SEC team's will be.

+ I won't wait until after the USC game to say this, but Jimmy Clausen (pictured, above) is not a Heisman Trophy candidate. I know I wrote this season that a good Notre Dame team is good for the sport, but we don't need to try so hard to make it seem that that squad actually is good. The Irish lost to a decent Michigan team and struggled to beat bad Purdue and Michigan State teams. Let's take it easy with Clausen, who's a nice talent and will certainly play on Sundays, but after USC's defense shuts him down, the calligrapher can take his name off the invite list for a December trip to New York.

+ I don't get sports radio. I understand that Atlanta is more of a pro town, but when the local screamers talk about college football, they lose me. I hate that our culture is so obsessed with perfection, that if Mark Richt (pictured, above) leads struggling Georgia to only seven or eight wins this year, he and/or his assistants need to be fired. The 'Dawgs are 2-3, but fans knew it would be hard to replace both Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno on offense. Sometimes bad experiences can lead to good growth; fans just need to be patient to let it happen naturally. Would replacing Richt really make for a much better season in 2010?