Ian Harris, who played in three games last season, will miss 2009 because of some recurrence of a stinger. Harris was replacing D.J. Grant (knee surgery), who was replacing Blaine Irby (dislocated knee).

Texas has other players to fill the position, but it sounds like all are either converted lineman or freshmen. But with Colt McCoy at quarterback, couldn’t the Longhorns just play with four wideouts all year?

The Orange were in the news quite a bit this week, and not for being blown out in any games. First-year coach Doug Marrone has already shaken things up with his quarterbacks. After naming sophomore Ryan Nassib the starter in the spring, Marrone needed just a week of fall practice to move Greg Paulus into the starting quarterback slot.

Yes, you read that right. Former Duke point guard Greg Paulus is going to start at quarterback for Syracuse.

The only way this happens is if the Orange have fallen to the bottom of the 120 teams in Division I-A. And Syracuse has. Why not take a chance and do something drastic?

Although he’s a grad student, Paulus is listed on the roster as a senior. The only other senior quarterback is last year’s starter, Cameron Dantley, who threw 11 touchdowns and five interceptions last year, but only completed 48 percent of his 251 pass attempts. Oh, and Syracuse was 3-8 when he played.

Nassib is a sophomore and the only other QB is Charley Loeb, a Hollis resident, who is a freshman.

The other big Syracuse news was the announcement of future football games . . . that will be played at the new Meadowlands Stadium. In 2012, the Orange will host USC and in 2014 and 2016, they’ll host Notre Dame.

That’s a long drive for the Orange fans that reside upstate, but perhaps it will help Marrone recruit in the New York City area. But if that’s the best way to go about recruiting players, maybe Syracuse should be playing games in Texas and California.

There are two things from move-in day at Pitt that have been burned into my memory - giant yellow-canvas carts and the annoying sound the wheels made rolling along the sidewalk. People weren’t supposed to be able to move in at all hours of the night, but that didn’t stop them.  Nothing like hearing the sound of cart wheels grating across grooved cement at 3 a.m. to enhance the college experience.

Move-in day meant that the start of the season was only a week or two away. My last year at Pitt (the 2003 season), the anticipation hung over campus like a fog. Larry Fitzgerald and Rod Rutherford were the first legitimate Heisman Trophy candidates since maybe Dan Marino (Fitzgerald ended up second). The team was loaded with returning players, and picked by some to unseat Miami as Big East Champion.

All the national polls had Pitt in the top 10 to start the year. After opening the season with home wins over Kent State and Ball State, Pitt moved up to No. 9.

And then it all fell apart. Pitt went to Toledo and was upset by the Rockets. A few weeks later, the Panthers lost at home to a bad Notre Dame team. By the end of the year, Pitt had five loses and was out of the top 25.

So where am I going with this? Relax, I’m about to make my point.

When considering what to put in this space as my first blog of the football season, I considered doing my own top 25 poll. But then I remembered how ridiculous it is to put together any kind of ranking before anyone has even played.

Just take a look at this year’s preseason USA Today Poll. It is a safe bet that Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and USC are going to finish the year in the top 10. But some of the others - Alabama, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Mississippi - won’t be a surprise when they drop.

The DI-A season starts on Thursday, Sept. 3 (just two weeks away) when South Carolina plays at North Carolina State. There are a couple of good games that Saturday, the 5th, with BYU and Oklahoma, and Alabama at Virginia Tech on the schedule. And of course Miami and Florida State play in Labor Day. Week 2 brings us Notre Dame at Michigan and USC at Ohio State.

But even after those games, we still won’t know which teams will be some of the best of 2009. That will probably have to wait till the end of September. And by then, maybe I’ll have a top 25 of my own.

I’m sure there are many economical and environmental reasons to stop printing hundreds of pages of (sometimes useless) information about every athletic team on campus. But in some way, it saddens me that this is happening.

When I was in college, we used to get media guides mailed to the student paper from every school that was on Pitt’s football schedule (Big East and whatever non-conference teams it played). We kept them secure in my desk. In fact, the only thing that was guarded more heavily than the media guides was probably the bottle of rum hidden in another drawer.

Those were the paper’s media guides, and they usually came in pretty handy. When we actually went to the games - home and away - there were even more copies of the opposing team’s guide, and I usually scooped one up for myself.

And then there were the basketball tournaments. At both the Big East and NCAA Tournaments, there were more media guides than my suitcase could handle. I always left with one of each.

I imagined the day, 10 or 15 or maybe even 20 years down the road, when I would go to my collection of media guides and say “Let’s look at who was on Virginia Tech’s football roster in 2002,” or “I wonder who holds the record for points in a season for Notre Dame basketball?” Maybe I’d have kids who one day would look at my media guides and marvel. What a collection it was, big enough that if filled half a bookcase.

Amazing, yes. But too soon, I found out how much of a pain it was.

After graduating college in April of 2004, I moved from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. By July of that year, I was moving again, this time to Kentucky. In January of 2005, I was on the move again, back to Pennsylvania. And then by October of that year … well, you get the picture. And by then, I was sick and tired of lugging around so much stuff. Something had to go.

Enter the media guides. I tossed A LOT of them. Some I kept (although now I’m not sure where). But most are gone. Part of me is sad because of that. More of me is thankful - not only that I got rid of them, but also that schools are going to stop making them.

Put them all on a Web site. Let those in need of information go online to look for it. After all, isn’t that what the Internet is for?

Again.

His comments about conference expansion not being his call should be coming soon.

Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno speaks with media in Fogelsville, Pa., before the "Evening With Joe" event on Wednesday, May 27, 2009.

The month of May opened with Paterno, who has been coaching football at Penn State since about the time the sport was invented, suggesting that the Big Ten Conference should add one more school to get to 12 (insert jokes about places of higher education being unable to count here). That would allow the conference to host a championship game in football.

Which schools should be added? Either Syracuse, Pittsburgh or Rutgers, according to JoePa.

Not long after Paterno made his comments, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said there are no plans to expand and no one is in a hurry to do so. Paterno then backed off his statement, saying he was the wrong person to talk to.

So what did he do on Wednesday? While at an alumni event, he told reporters he’d like to see the Big Ten expand, with either Syracuse, Pitt or Rutgers getting on board. And he also said there was one school that shouldn’t be invited: Notre Dame.

“There’s some pressure, I would suppose, to maybe go back to Notre Dame and ask again, which I would not be happy with,” Paterno said. “I think they’ve had their chance.”

So did JoePa forget about the last couple of weeks? Probably. He is 82.

Does he not realize that this is 2009, not 1959? The head coach of a Division I-A football program can no longer say anything to anyone about anything controversial and not have it become a national story, especially members of the media.

Would Paterno really not want to see Notre Dame added as the 12th team just because the Irish declined once? Probably. He’s been bitter toward Pitt since the school opted to join the Big East in basketball in the early 1980s. That’s something he hasn’t forgotten. At least, not yet.

The lawsuit says that the UKAA has yet to pay Gillispie the $6 million he says he is still owed.

Defendant has breached its written contract with Coach Gillispie by failing, without legal excuse to perform its contractual obligations.”

Now here is the funny part - Gillispie never signed the formal contract the school gave to him when he was hired in the spring of 2007. Instead, he was working under a memorandum of understanding.

In this March 12, 2009, file photo, Kentucky head coach Billy Gillispie questions a call during the first half of an NCAA men's college basketball game against Mississippi at the Southeastern Conference tournament.

Also in the lawsuit, Gillispie discusses how he was an up-and-coming coach at Texas A&M before going to Kentucky under false representations.

The school has released a statement about the lawsuit. Sounds like the administration is as surprised as you would expect. One has to wonder if UK really is trying to come to an agreement with Gillispie, why would he do this? To try to speed up the process, maybe. Or is he just looking to stick it to his former employer.

The University of Tennessee, the football coach’s employer (for which he has yet to coach a game by the way), reported to the NCAA that Kiffin (or maybe one of his assistants) used the name of a committed, unsigned recruit on his Twitter. And of course, any mention of an unsigned player by a coach is strictly forbidden.

I would expect that the NCAA has no specific rules yet about Twitter, but will soon have some. Like the laws of the real world, I’m sure it takes time for the NCAA to update it’s code of conduct to fit with technological innovations. Soon enough I’m sure, NCAA officials will be digging through the depths of not only Twitter, but MySpace and Facebook, looking for more violations.

Meanwhile, Kiffin is probably in his office, watching game film. Or so he says.

No matter who ends up with the top pick, Blake Griffin, from Oklahoma, seems to be the consensus No. 1. And why not? There’s not much else in this draft. That’s why so many underclassmen declared. Take a look at the list.

UPDATE: We’re down to the final three picks. It took until pick six for anything exciting to happen, as Nos. 7 through 14 held true to the standings. The big loser? The Kings, who had a 1-in-4 chance of landing the top pick and instead end up at No. 4. But it was worth seeing the “Oh well, I’m retired” look on Chris Webber’s face.

The three remaining teams are the Clippers, Grizzlies and Thunder. Here’s hoping Griffin doesn’t end up in LA.

UPDATE TWO: Oh well. The Clippers get the No. 1 pick, with the Grizzlies at No. 2 and the Thunder at No. 3.

Unless they do something crazy - Michael Olowokandi anyone? - the Clippers should be taking Griffin with that pick in next month’s draft. So it should be about three years until he’s a free agent and bolting LA for some other team.

In the end, I just felt I wanted to play for Coach Cal,” Wall said. “Coaches give different visions of what they can do for you when they talk to you. And all of those are impressive, but my long relationship with Coach Cal and what he can do for me in his program was the main thing.”

So this gives Calipari the top two ranked recruits this year - Wall and DeMarcus Cousins - to go with Daniel Orton (ranked No. 22 by Rivals.com) and Bledsoe (23). Kentucky also has two four-star prospects, according to Rivals, coming in as well.

This may be the finest group of freshmen since Michigan’s Fab Five. Chances of them all sticking around for more than one year? Actually, I’d say there’s no chance.

I also was temporarily addicted to NCAA Football 2007. I would stay up at night and simulate a season, just so I could go through the offseason and recruiting period. And then I’d do it again the next night.

Anyone who has played college football or basketball video games knows the rosters feature made-up names that go with the physical attributes of real players.

It’s never been much of a secret, but now one former college quarterback has had enough of it.

Former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller has brought a lawsuit against the NCAA and EA, the maker of the game, claiming that the athletes’ images are used without permission and against the NCAA’s own rules.

The NCAA seems to have itself covered here. If Keller, and any other players who decide to join in the lawsuit, were to win, I would imagine there’d be one of two outcomes: either EA stops using virtual players who resemble real players, or the players would have to get a cut of the profits.

That brings up another issue - should college athletes get paid for playing their respective sport?

My answer to that would be that the majority of them are already getting paid. It’s called a scholarship.

Sure, there are plenty of Division I college football and basketball players to whom a scholarship to a good college means next to nothing. But there are plenty of other athletes in those sports, and others, who care about the free education they’re getting to play a sport.

I’m sure I’m not just speaking for myself when I say getting a free education as “payment” for anything would have been a pretty sweet deal.