In The Heat of the Tuesday Night: Best of the late-night SEC

I'm a little late going to bed, so I thought I would, I don't know, make a blog post. What the heck, it's August!

• The Alabama Basketball Blog gives us some basketball scheduling info, and a picture of Hawai'i in honor of the Maui Invitational. He even spells the name of the state correctly! I lived there during a hitch in the Navy, so every time I see Hawai'i mentioned, it makes me want to go back. Bad.
  
  
• Kyle King of Dawg Sports, a blogger whom I truly respect, has this detailed and interesting post rejecting the "plus one" idea. As I said, I deeply respect Kyle and his entirely conservative view of college football, but we do part ways on this idea. I actually see the "plus one" as an opportunity to rejoin the days when the Rose Bowl was between the Pac-10 and Big 10 (or is it 11?) champ, and restore some historical sanity to the BCS. Kyle makes a compelling argument, though.
  
  
• I admit it -- I love basketball. VolNation has a basketball post. Ergo, it gets linked. Call it cognitive dissonance.
  
  Anyway, hatvol at VolNation makes a very interesting and poignant comment about a move afoot among the ACC coaches to declare Skip Prosser's verbally committed recruits off limits, even though NCAA rules permit recruiting them. Skip Prosser's death was a tragedy, and he was a great coach. It is very thoughtful of the ACC coaches considering such a move to contemplate honoring him in this way. But I think it is a bad idea.
  
  To be sure, trying to convince recruits who have already "given their word" to change their mind and break it has a certain inherently ethics-challenged component to it. Do we really want our young men and women breaking their verbal commitments as their first official act in entering college?
  
  Still, if the ACC coaches declare a moratorium, what's to stop non-league coaches from swooping down and picking them up? In my opinion, that is unilateral disarmament that, while laudable in its good intentions, places an unfortunate burden on the ACC. Obviously, one would hope that non-league coaches would honor such a request, but it is by no means binding. And if one of the young men does happen to change their mind on their own initiative, the coach of the school he decides to go to will be under constant suspicion and perhaps even taint of "wrongdoing".
  
  Bottom line -- as laudable as I think this idea is, I think it is fraught with potential unintended consequences. Best that we bury our honored dead, and not change the way we go about life, for good or ill, lest we be forced to live with unforeseen and undesirable outcomes.