SPORTS N STUFF

Michigan quarterback Tate Forcier jogged to the sideline with a request.

Can I get some of the air out of this? Forcier asked.

Equipment manager Bob Bland helped him out, using a device to deflate some air from the freshmans helmet.

Its the first day, Bland said Monday.

Better get used to it, kid.

Forcier felt pressure on his head after taking just a few snaps during the Wolverines first practice and asked for help to relieve it.

It wont be as easy when hes the No. 1 quarterback for college footballs winningest program, which is coming off a school-record nine losses in Rich Rodriguezs debut season with the Wolverines.

Forcier might not start the opener next month at home against Western Michigan, but its difficult to envision him spending a lot of time on the sideline behind Nick Sheridan or fellow freshman Denard Robinson.

Our rule is, if youre good enough to win with, well play you, Rodriguez said.

Forcier isnt expected to talk to reporters until media day on Aug. 23 and Sheridan wasnt given a chance Monday to address the quarterback competition after the opening practice.

Forcier rotated with Sheridan during early drills that were open to the media, throwing crisp passes and looking much more comfortable than a typical freshman.

Tate is farther ahead mentally as he should be because he was here all spring, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and offensive coordinator Calvin Magee closely watched Forcier and Sheridan quickly go through drills in which they ran the option, handed the ball off up the middle and threw an array of intermediate passes.

Freshman Denard Robinson, meanwhile, was being tutored by quarterbacks coach Rod Smith as he shared repetitions with the quarterbacks lower on the depth chart.

After reporters had to leave, Forcier and Sheridan apparently impressed starting cornerback Donovan Warren.

Both quarterbacks had a great day, Warren said.

Forcier left sunny San Diego last winter, started his studies at Michigan last spring and gained a lot of experience during spring drills. He ended up learning more than he imagined because Steve Threet transferred and Sheridan broke his leg after both shared staring duties last season.

It forced Tate to take a lot of reps and it expedited the process, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez insisted, though, that Forcier will have to compete with Sheridan and Robinson to win the job.

The 6-foot-1, 188-pound Forcier moves around with poise and throws accurate passes, leading to comparisons to NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia.

If the Wolverines are going to have a turnaround season, though, Forcier will have to quickly turn his potential into production.

Rodriguez plans to create situations in practice – such as letting defensive players hit quarterbacks – that will show him if his newcomers can contribute quickly.

Weve got to put pressure on the freshmen, particularly the quarterbacks, Rodriguez said.

At the open end of Husky Stadium, a kiosk selling school merchandise sat next to the local sports radio station broadcasting live, all while a couple hundred fans wearing purple and gold milled around the track and practice fields.

The start of Steve Sarkisians first fall camp Monday at Washington looked very little like previous years under former coach Tyrone Willingham.

With practices open to the public and media, Sarkisian and the Huskies got started on trying to forget last years 0-12 debacle and rebuild the once proud program.

For the first-time head coach, hired away from Southern California last December, it was the 16th practice he has led with the Huskies. Sarkisian doesnt have long to analyze and evaluate a what he has. The Sept. 5 opener with LSU is looming and daunting.

It was a lot better than our day one in spring, Sarkisian said. Just from an execution standpoint we were playing faster. You could tell our kids had studied and prepared all offseason. Was it perfect? No. But we did things really, really well that jumped out at me.

Willingham closed almost all his practices to fans and allowed only a few minutes of access to the media. Sarkisian is the opposite, bringing many of the same policies from USC. Hes opened up the entire fall camp to anyone who wants to come see if he can turnaround the program that hasnt been to a bowl game since 2002.

Mondays cool and drizzly weather brought out only a small crowd to see the high-intensity practice that lasted about 2 1/2 hours. Coaches even had to chastise some of the defensive players for being a little too intense. They were taking their teammates to the turf, even though they were wearing only helmets and shorts.

Maybe guys had a little too much tempo today taking guys down, quarterback Jake Locker said. Its a quick practice, its fast, guys are moving fast and I thought it was productive for us.

That kind of intensity is a welcome sight for many fans who grew tired of Willinghams stoic demeanor and the reserved attitude his team portrayed. Part of the decision in hiring Sarkisian was reversing that view and trying to bring more excitement to the program.

Locker had his sharp moments, but also showed some rough spots as he learns the nuances of the pro-style system Sarkisian will employ. The junior is fully recovered from the broken thumb that cost him most of last season and trying to pick up where he left off in the spring with the new offense.

Just making sure to where youre not thinking. Thats the challenge with any offense your learning, Locker said. Theres still a little thinking going on so over the next three weeks it will work itself out.

He also found himself a possible new target in freshman James Johnson. One of the gems in Sarkisians first recruiting class, the 6-foot receiver from Valley Center, Calif. was already running with the No. 1 offense on the first day.

You look at our wide receiver play today, there were some guys hungry to get the football, Sarkisian said. A lot of guys made plays. … Im anxious to look at this film because I think youre going to see a lot of guys doing well, but there is still a lot of work to clean up.

Alabama coach Nick Saban wants the Crimson Tide to focus on intangibles such as leadership, handling success and finishing better – a not-so-subtle reminder of last years collapse.

People sort of look in the mirror and fall in love with themselves sometimes when they have a little success, Saban said Wednesday. We need to have a burning desire to improve, to play better football than we played a year ago.

The Tide tumbled with season-ending losses to Florida and Utah after winning its first 12 games and rising to a No. 1 ranking.

Thats why Saban has different priorities going into the start of fall camp on Thursday.

He knows people want to talk about depth charts leading up to camp: Whos going to be the Crimson Tides left tackle? The backup quarterback? How good can that defense be?

Saban is focusing on consistency – starting with the defense.

The Tides defense was one of the nations best last season and returns eight starters despite offseason attrition that claimed starting linebacker Brandon Fanney.

The Tide ranked third nationally in total defense and second against the run. Saban harps on the end-of-season breakdowns in the last two games, when Alabama allowed 31 points apiece.

That includes a sudden inability to keep teams out of the end zone on 7-of-9 trips inside the 20-yard line, which Saban called the difference between playing in the national championship game and not playing in it.

Those guys have a lot to prove and a lot to re-establish who they are and what they want to do, Saban said. All the things we emphasized in the last two games we didnt do.

Offensively, junior quarterback Greg McElroy secured the No. 1 spot during spring practice, but redshirt freshman Star Jackson, walk-on Thomas Darrah and possibly freshman A.J. McCarron will vie for the backup role. Junior college transfer James Carpenter, who participated in spring practice, and 6-foot-6, 350-pound freshman D.J. Fluker, will bid to replace All-America and Outland Trophy-winning left tackle Andre Smith.

Another offensive priority: Finding more go-to receivers to complement Julio Jones.

The offseason took some toll on the roster. Fanney and fellow linebacker Prince Hall, defensive back Alonzo Lawrence and running back Jermaine Preyear have been dismissed from the team for violating team rules.

We have a demanding program here, Saban said. These guys didnt do what they were supposed to, whether it was for academic reasons or whatever, and theyre not going to be a part of the program.

Charlie Higgenbotham and Chris Jackson have already transferred while four more reserves left the team for medical reasons. Three signees will enroll in January and count toward next years scholarship limits.

Fanney started at jack linebacker, a hybrid outside linebacker/defensive end spot where he recorded 66 tackles last season. Eryk Anders backed up Fanney last season and played in every game.

Saban used a question about his plans at that position – possibly including shifting over inside linebacker Donta Hightower – to make another point.

Fanney didnt participate in spring practice and we didnt drop football at Alabama, Saban said. One player cant make our team one way or the other. We have other players that well try at their position.

But, he added, Not one player is going to take our team over the top, but one player can destroy our team by not doing what hes supposed to, not buying in.

Brian Kelly is the son of an alderman, a political science major who figured hed go into politics after college. Unlike many top football coaches, he has no pedigree, no ties to famous coaches or programs.

Hes gone from Grand Valley State to Central Michigan to Cincinnati, where in two seasons he has turned a basketball school into a BCS participant and become the coach most likely to be mentioned when a job opens up at a traditional football schools.

Washington and Tennessee both had interest in Kelly last year. And if the Bearcats can do anything close to repeating the 11-3 record they had in 2008, you can bet more schools with way bigger athletic budgets than UC will try to woo him.

All the speculation by fans and media about where he might be going next doesnt bother Kelly.

I want to be talked about because that means were having a good season, he said in an interview Tuesday before Big East media day at a Newport hotel.

Cincinnati has done its best to keep Kelly. His new five-year contract pays him $1.5 million annually and the school has committed to improve facilities, including the construction of two new practice facilities.

A year removed from a Big East championship, Cincinnati has decided to play a huge part in this as well, he said. They want their program to be regarded as more than just a place to stop over. Have a couple of good years and find another job.

Theyve made an investment to make this a Top 25 job. Lets make this a position that even though his name may be bandied about, lets create an opportunity here at Cincinnati that makes it so that he doesnt need to go anywhere else.

The 46-year-old Kelly has shown so far he doesnt need to go anywhere else to win big. Winning has followed him. In 18 seasons as a head coach, hes had a losing record once.

At Division II Grand Valley State in western Michigan, he took over a solid program in 1991 and built it into a three-time national champion before he left after the 2003 season.

At Central Michigan, he went from 4-7 his first season to a Mid-American Conference championship in his third.

He came to Cincinnati with a reputation as an offensive genius, another spread offense prodigy whose teams were fun to watch and impossible to defend.

But that wasnt what most attracted Cincinnati athletic director Mike Thomas. Kellys charisma and ability to connect with people was what made him the perfect fit for a program buried in Buckeyes country that needed more than just an Xs and Os guy.

We needed to hire someone who had a real presence, Thomas said in a phone interview. Someone who could sell this program, get people excited about it.

Kelly, who worked on Gary Harts presidential campaign after he graduated from Assumption College in his native Massachusetts in 1983, has pushed Bearcats football like a politician on the stump.

Going to the local chicken and beer place in east Cincinnati or doing the home visits, he said, that grass roots part is so ingrained in being a politician because thats your groundswell of support. Well, its the same thing in building a program.

How do we get Cincinnati to fill the stands? I had to do 77 different public appearances in a year.

Cincinnati wasnt a program in tatters when Kelly took over. His predecessor, Mark Dantonio, had two winning season in his three seasons.

Cincinnati football has been respectable for years. Kelly brought it to the big time. The Bearcats won their first Big East championship last year and earned a bid to the Orange Bowl.

This season, they were picked third in a wide-open Big East. Cincinnati brings back quarterback Tony Pike, star receiver Marcus Gilyard and most of the key players from last years offense. The Bearcats wont surprise anyone if they repeat.

And Pike, who grew up in Cincinnati and remembers when 17,000 fans at Nippert Stadium was considered a big crowd, said Kelly might not be so quick to jump to a more glamorous job.

Coach Kellys kind of taken this program to a new level, Pike said. In the past, people used the word steppingstone, Cincinnatis like steppingstone to a bigger school. Coach Kelly comes to UC and we can make it to a national championship game. We got the fan base now where were selling out Nippert Stadium and we have the support around the community that a coach needs. We can offer that now. I think this is a place coach Kelly is going to be at for a long time.

Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz is mulling a run for Congress in Florida as a Republican.

A GOP strategist said Tuesday that Holtz could decide in the next several weeks whether to run for the central Florida congressional seat currently held by Democrat Suzanne Kosmas.

The strategist requested anonymity because he is not authorized to talk about the matter.

The 72-year-old Holtz has never run for office. He has worked as an analyst at ESPN since retiring from his last coaching stint at the University of South Carolina at the end of the 2004 season.

Holtz is the only coach to guide six schools to a bowl game, and he led Notre Dame to its last national championship in 1988. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame last year.

The failure was sudden and dramatic and it accomplished the seemingly impossible: sucking the energy and self-confidence from Terry Bowden.

His abrupt exit from Auburns football team nearly 11 years ago left the unabashedly ambitious, ultraconfident coach full of self-doubt.

I think I suppressed so much depression and just unhappiness, said Bowden, preparing for his first season coaching at Division II North Alabama. You wake up for at least 30-45 minutes every day and say, Could I have done something different? How did that happen?

It crushed me. I was probably unable to handle that degree of failure to the degree that it crushed me.

It kept the onetime coaching wunderkind – who won his first 20 games as a major college coach – sidelined for nearly a decade, relegated to the comparatively safe world of TV studios, broadcasting booths and keyboards.

Now hes back. Back in the state where he gained fame and eventually infamy, but far removed from both Auburn and the powerful Southeastern Conference. Mostly, hes just back coaching.

At 53, Bowden has taken over a Division II power tucked away in the northwest corner of the state, a four-hour drive from Auburn. Unlike the down-and-out programs he took over during a rapid ascent through the coaching ranks, the Lions regularly win 10 games and made the national semifinals last year.

Now, hes gotten to one thats on top, said Bowdens father, Florida State coach Bobby Bowden. Its harder to maintain than to build.

Thats why Bowden calls this the most professionally challenging job Ive ever had.

He has worked as a radio talk show host, ABC studio analyst, Westwood One broadcaster, Internet columnist and motivational speaker during his absence from the sidelines.

Then he turned 50 and started wondering, Is this what I want to do the rest of my life?

I wanted to coach again and then I really wanted to coach again and that created the fire, Bowden said. And that got everything going. Thats what made everything happen. Its just the very normal male thing of reaching 50 and looking in the mirror.

He interviewed at his alma mater West Virginia, but assistant Bill Stewart wound up getting the job replacing Rich Rodriguez.

Then he was broadcasting the Division II national championship game in Florence and somebody slipped him a note asking if hed be interested in coaching at North Alabama.

Thus began the second act of a head coaching career that started at age 26 and took him to the SEC by 36.

He led probation-racked Auburn to 11 wins in 1993, one more than the Tigers had managed the previous two seasons combined. They wouldnt lose until 10 games into the following season.

That idyllic beginning didnt have a happy ending.

The 1998 season was a disaster, with injuries, academic problems and other off-field issues for Bowdens players. The Tigers started 1-5 and Bowden resigned, maintaining that he bolted only after influential trustee Bobby Lowder told him he would be fired.

He moved to Orlando and seldom returned to the state for speaking engagements. When Bowden began trying to get back into coaching, he figured Alabama was the last place hed end up.

Florence, with a population of about 37,000, is closer to the Mississippi and Tennessee borders than to Auburn, though.

Its not in the epicenter of controversy, (where) its just 365 days of bitter rivalry, Bowden said.

He said Auburn fans have received him warmly, which is nice because I never could quite say goodbye.

Bowden still has the energy for coaching. With his family back in Orlando, where theyre trying to sell their house, he has spent many nights on the couch in his office.

Jeff Bowden, a UNA assistant and former Florida State offensive coordinator, said his older brother frequently sends text messages at 4 a.m. to staffers.

What scares me about Terry, I never thought the batteries could get more charged than they are, Jeff Bowden said. Ive never seen a coach like him that just went after everything, there was nothing he couldnt do.

Now magnify that by five. Hes so hungry. Its like 10 years off, those batteries are supercharged. Hes just working at a pace thats tough to be around because its tough to hang with.

He calls Terry the best football coach in our family, with the exception of maybe Dad. Brother Tommy is a former head coach at Clemson and Tulane.

Bowden has his 1993 Bear Bryant national coach of the year award prominently on the desk in his outer office, with two UNA purple and gold ties wrapped around it.

He was the first Division I coach in more than five decades to reach 100 wins before his 40th birthday. And Bowden, perhaps the coaching familys biggest Type A personality, was already calculating how many wins hed need to average to pass Bryants record for major college wins since eclipsed by both his father and Penn States Joe Paterno.

Quick turnarounds at Salem College, Samford and Auburn hardly prepared him to cope with major setbacks.

I set myself up to be devastated when something came in that was too big for me to handle, Bowden said. Of all us, I was the personality that would hurt the most. I was the 5-5 guy that was proving something every minute.

Bowden said he isnt necessarily looking at North Alabama as a launching pad back into a more high-profile gig or taking success for granted.

Im realistic enough to know they have fired coaches here for not winning, he said. And if I win a lot, somebody might come along and offer me money that Ill really have a hard time turning down. But Im not here to move on. Ive been to Division I.

Plus he added: Im 53, and a man at 53 sees life and objectives and satisfactions a little different than a guy of 36.