Southern Miss wants you to choose their gold helmets

Southern Miss needs your help. The Golden Eagles know they're going to add a gold helmet to their traditional black lids this season, but they're not sure which one. This is where you come in.

Beginning yesterday and running through next Friday, May 31, Southern Miss is offering up four options and asking the Internet to pick which one they like best. The school isn't offering details about when the winning helmet will be worn just yet, only that it will be used in addition to the black helmets.

So, which one will it be?

Option 1:

Option 2: 

Option 3:

Option 4:

Vote for your favorite here.

Check out Oklahoma State's 2013 hype video

This video from Oklahoma State, hyping up the start of the 2013 season needs no spoken words to portray the excitement in Stillwater.

Instead, the lyrics to the Oklahoma State alma mater flash across the screen and get mixed in with some highlights that will get your blood pumping. 

Toledo is looking to tap kegs for games in 2013

Toledo is the latest school to explore the sale of beer and wine at home football and basketball games, according to the Toledo Blade.

School officials will meet over the next few weeks to discuss the new revenue stream, and weigh all the options. If approved, alcohol sales would be ready for their September 14th home opener against Eastern Washington.

While 22 other stadiums currently sell beer and wine to their general admission fan base, Toledo would be the just the 12th on campus FBS stadium to do so. Conference foes Bowling Green, Akron, and Kent State already sell alcohol at home games. In fact, Kent State charges just $2 a beer in an effort to pack the stands.

Making the decision to actually sell beer at games means a lot of logistics have to be ironed out, such as increased security and what point to cut off sales during the tail end of a game. However, more and more schools are willing to explore the idea in an effort to get fans out from in from in front of their HDTV's and into the stands.

A final decision is expected to be made within the next two weeks.

Extreme Makeover: Football Edition - Take a tour of Arizona's new facility

Earlier this week we wrote about how beneficial a good commissioner can be to a conference, and specifically the positive effect Larry Scott has had on Pac-12 football. Case in point: the new Lowell-Stevens Football Facility, currently under construction at Arizona. 

The $72 million facility is scheduled for a July move-in date, and Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne and head coach Rich Rodriguez on Wednesday provided a tour of the Wildcats' new den. With the skills these two show as tour guides, we're seeing the potential for the next great home improvement reality show. Extreme Makover: Football Edition, anyone?

Rutgers AD: 'If you've never coached, you set yourself up to not understand what your coaches do for a living'

You have to feel for Kyle Flood a little bit. While the Mike Rice imbroglio caught fire nationally, Flood sat quietly inside inside the Hale Center, looking to build upon his 9-4 debut season. And when athletic director Tim Pernetti ultimately followed Rice out the door, Flood lost an otherwise respected voice inside the athletic department and, most importantly, the boss who hired him.

Pernetti's replacement was finally hired last week - Julie Hermann, a long-time lieutenant under athletic director Tom Jurich at Big East bunk-mate Louisville. Though it's never ideal for a coach to work under a boss that wasn't around when he got the job, especially entering year two of his tenure, Hermann has said the right things so far. Though, with only one week on the job, she's hardly had the chance to do otherwise. 

“My entire focus is on surrounding him [with what he needs] and making sure he doesn’t feel like everything is strapped on his back," Hermann told ESPN.com. "I think a lot of football coaches feel like the entire athletic department is strapped on their backs, and that’s not fair. So wherever he needs me to focus, that goes to the top of my list.”

A former coach herself, Hermann thinks her experience on the sidelines will help her relate with all whistle-wearers at Rutgers.

"While every sport is very different -- that's one of first things you learn -- managing coaches is pretty consistent," Hermann said. "I'm very thankful to have been a head coach at the Division I level, because that actually helps me speak coach. I would never consider doing this job had I not been a Division I head coach, because I think it's really easy to say the wrong things to your coaches. I see a lot of guys who played college football, but they never coached it. And I think if you've never coached, you set yourself up to not understand what your coaches do for a living. ... And that's what I'll take to Rutgers for all of my coaches including Kyle Flood, whom I think is fantastic."

Read Hermann's full Q&A here.

American sports have a new highest-paid coach

According to the folks at Forbes, there's a new No. 1 on the list of America's highest-paid coaches. Putting literal meaning into the phrase "absence makes the heart grow fonder", New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton's new five-year, $40 million contract, awarded after his year-long NFL suspension, allowed him to unseat New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick atop the list.

Further cementing its place atop the American sports mountain, NFL coaches account for eight of the 10 spots on the list. Seven of the names are well-established coaches with 99 years of experience and a dozen Super Bowl experiences between them - and Chip Kelly. 

Here is the full list, based on annual salaries according to Forbes:

1. Sean Payton, New Orleans Saints: $8 million
2. Bill Belichick, New England Patriots: $7.5 million
    Andy Reid, Kansas City Chiefs: $7.5 million
4. Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks: $7 million
    Jeff Fisher, St. Louis Rams: $7 million
    Doc Rivers, Boston Celtics: $7 million
    Mike Shanahan, Washington Redskins: $7 million
8. Tom Coughlin, New York Giants: $6.67 million
9. Chip Kelly, Philadelphia Eagles: $6.5 million
10. Gregg Popovich, San Antonio Spurs: $6 million

Unexpected gesture will replace memorabilia to tornado victims

In a day and age where schools are having to cut programs and spending at an exponential rate, it's comforting to see a story like the one that NewsOK ran today pointing out that the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association is offering to replace many state championship and playoff memorabilia lost in the tornado earlier this week.

The best part is that the memorabilia is being replaced at no charge.

According to the article, the OSSAA will replace "lost trophies, plaques, medals and state championship t-shirts for any school, coach, athletic director or student who had the items lost in the storm". All they have to do is contact the school that they participated at and notify them of the loss and then school administrators will report the items that need replaced. Unfortunately for some, programs from the events are one item that cannot be replaced.

No one expected this from the governing body of Oklahoma high school sports, and it won't fix everything, but what it will do is provide a sense of hope and comfort to communities and individuals that have been ravaged by the storm and help them start to return to a sense of normalcy.

Normally memorabilia like that is lost forever in a storm of this magnitude, so this is an excellent, and heartwarming move by the OSSAA that will be appreciated by hundreds and hundreds of people for years to come. 

2013-14 Bowl Schedule Officially Finalized

It's the end of an era for the bowl business.

We all know the BCS is gone after this year, but the rest of the bowls will change the way they do business as well as new contracts get signed. After, oh, about seven decades, the schools and conferences have finally realized that the bowls could not exist without them, and not the other way around. With that in mind, conferences are taking more control of the process, dictating which teams will play where while also demanding higher payouts and lower ticket guarantees. (To see an educated guess about how the bowl lineups will work beginning next season, check out Stewart Mandel's column from Tuesday.)

But all that is a conversation for another day. Before the clock hits midnight on the current state of affairs in the bowl business, the guys in oddly colored jackets will celebrate the last year before the College Football Playoff. 

As is the norm, "bowl week" encompasses 35 games across 17 days, with every game except the Sun Bowl (CBS) and the Cotton Bowl (FOX) on the ESPN family of networks.