Every day here at Your Best 11, we are counting down to the start of the regular season with our Top 150 players for the 2012 season.

No. 108: Cobi Hamilton, No. 11, Arkansas, Wide Receiver

Strengths

Entering 2011, folks were looking for Greg Childs, Joe Adams and Jarius Wright to set the tone for the Razorbacks receiving core. What they got was Adams and Wright setting the pace, Chris Gragg becoming a major factor and a "new" guy emerging as the third-best wide receiver target, Cobi Hamilton.

Hamilton caught 34 balls, scored four touchdowns and finished third in receiving yards for the Hogs. The kid is a big, physical target that fits perfectly into Arkansas' wide-open scheme.

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If you have not seen the James Franklin, head coach at Vanderbilt, quotes that heated up the media, we'll do a quick rehash session for you. While Franklin was talking to Clay Travis on 104.5 The Zone he had this to say about hiring assistant coaches:

Pretty straight forward, and as you can imagine in today's day and age of sensitivity and political correctness, this quote did not play well. Franklin would quickly apologize via his twitter account: 

The Franklin situation was a mild media firestorm as his boss, vice chancellor of athletics David Williams, made sure to quell the complaining before it could grow from a mild storm into a full-blown ordeal. 

Here's the problem, missed in all of the sensitivity and worry about political correctness is the fact that James Franklin just gave everyone a quick lesson on a critical part of breaking into the college football coaching ranks: 

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Every day here at Your Best 11, we are counting down to the start of the regular season with our Top 150 players for the 2012 season.

No. 109: Merrill Noel, No. 7, Wake Forest, Cornerback

Strengths

What an absolute ballplayer Noel is. Though the redshirt freshman was still adjusting to the game, he clearly showed why Wake Forest has been able to have players contribute early and often.

After sitting out a year and honing his skills in a redshirt season, Noel hit the ground running. He exhibited a great understanding of the zone concepts that Wake Forest utilizes in their back end and capitalized on that to the tune of 21 pass breakups, enough to lead the nation. Noel pushes his backpedal hard, he squats on routes and he breaks on the football in exceptional fashion.

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We’ve made it to June 1, which means Sept. 1—a.k.a. the first college-football Saturday of 2012—is now just a semi-manageable three months away. This is both exciting and incredibly depressing.

It sounds and feels like an eternity, and in some ways it is, but the only thing standing between you and kickoff is time (our worst nemesis), the heat and probably more ridiculous expansion rumors. Oh, and college football is getting a playoff, which should be thoroughly distracting.

By July, you will be football deprived—you already are—and there’s nothing you can do to fill this emptiness. You can, however, ready yourself for the season by doing the following to ensure you’re prepared for Week 1.

Eat Well, Exercise and Get In Football-Watching Shape

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Brady Hoke has made quite the splash in Ann Arbor; he won double-digit games in his first season at the helm for the Wolverines and got Michigan back to a BCS bowl game. The man is tearing it up on the recruiting trail, and everyone with the Maize and Blue is looking forward to the 2012 campaign with their Heisman hopeful, Denard Robinson.

Hoke's also talked about playing scrimmages against opponents in the spring, something we've been more than thrilled to hear coaches supporting.

It turns out the Wolverines' head coach is not done showing off just how well he "gets it" where college football is concerned. In fact, Hoke goes so far as to say something that even Ohio State fans cannot scoff at. From Hoke's speech at the Kettering, Ohio Agonis Club awards banquet, Doug Harris of the Dayton Daily News brings us this winner:

Yes, folks. Unlike Bret Bielema and Mark Dantonio, Hoke is absolutely ready to fight the good fight when it comes to recruits, all the way down to the wire if that's what it takes. He understands that there is fierce competition for these young men's services, and with everything coming at them, they reserve the right to change their mind, even at the last minute.

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Expansion has been one of the hottest topics during the college football offseason, and today we've decided to go off the beaten path to bring the view on expansion from the "eye of the little guy."

"Little guy" is a relative term; the Mountain West Conference has its fair share of undefeated seasons, big bowl wins and quality teams. Well, to be fair, "had" might be the best word to use in this situation. The league has lost the two BCS bowl wins of Utah, the two BCS bowl births of TCU and the promise of the Boise State Broncos program in a relatively short period of time.

Today we kick out the inaugural The Upset podcast from the fine folks over at The Upset Blog. Zach Bloxham and Brett Hein are two guys who have covered Pac-12, WAC, Big Sky, WCC, and the aforementioned MWC with a tremendous fervor.

Unlike folks in the SEC and Big 12 who have watched their leagues grow to force the issue, the WAC and MWC have seen teams leave and fight to cobble together a league in a fight for survival. The opposite side of the conference expansion ordeal, if you will.

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It started in January of 2011, when the Oklahoma Sooners saw the Texas Longhorns work their magic in establishing the Longhorn Network. The Sooners decided that the whole "dedicated school network" business sounded mighty good, and they embarked on a path to create their own "All Sooners, All the Time" network.

Around 17 months after starting down the path, the Crimson and Cream are finally at the starting line as far as the network is concerned.

Athletic director Joe Castiglione says the OU network—yet to be truly blessed with a name—is going to launch this fall, according to Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, and that is a big deal to the Sooners' faithful fans:

One football game on the television is just part of the move from the Sooners as they travel down this path. Unlike the Longhorn Network or BYUtv, this channel is not going to be "All Sooners, All the Time," as the original plan called for. Rather, Dodd reports they will be filling blocks of time with Sooners content. How much time?

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We missed last Thursday because some folks decided to be tardy to the question party. This week everyone got their questions in right on time and so we're off and running. There is a lot to tackle here from multiple angles, so here we go folks!

First up, so much ACC stuff, so we're going to get them all out of the way quickly and rapid-fire:

That would be so ACC of the Heels and the league in general.

In recent years, only two things come to mind as being more ACC than the Heels running the table in 2012 while ineligible to play for a title: Virginia Tech sandwiching their season with losses to Boise State and Stanford while kicking butt the rest of the games and Clemson getting run off the field by West Virginia in the Orange Bowl.

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