The winds of change are blowing as the NCAA has moved to deregulate the recruiting landscape. While the Big Ten coaches and athletic directors hope to fight the news, the fact is that freedom is on the way for those in the recruiting game. Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports falls into the same category, as his most recent piece on the recruiting "Wild, Wild West" details.

Ultimately, all of the talk is merely reinforcing the ideal that kids need to wrestle more power from the guys who are recruiting them. It should have started a long time ago, and indeed it did for some kids, but with the 2014 change coming, now more than ever, recruits have to recognize and act upon the upper hand they have in the process.

We've all heard the horror stories of the coaches that won't quit calling, the guys who text message and Facebook chat as soon as a prospect jumps on. We know about the ghost phone calls and the burner phones, too.

With the new rules coming, it all sounds like just an amplification of those original horror stories. Except it doesn't have to be, and more importantly, it shouldn't.

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The Orlando Sentinel has got all of the most current start dates for college football's spring season, and the Army Black Knights have already started their drills. For a lot of folks spring ball is some amorphous ideal that culminates in a Spring Game, that no one really knows what to take away from it because each coach uses their own scoring metric.

You hear talk about rising and falling on depth charts. Guys sitting out due to injury. They had a good practice. They had a bad practice. Tempo was up. Intensity was down. Young Player X is coming on strong. Returning Player Y is having trouble with the position change.

A lot of words being kicked around and written up that, ultimately, no one is really sure how to take when they see the updates. Folks, I promise you there is a method to the mayhem that is spring ball.

Some coaches like to go fast, cramming their 15 practices in as soon as possible. Other coaches prefer to stretch it out, give players time to digest the information and recover from drills. Coming out of winter conditioning the players' bodies are primed, they are ready for the rigors, much like after summer running guys are at their peak for fall camp.

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Not a damn thing.

I'm not a Big East basher. Quite honestly, I think it has some schools that could be pretty good at football if they were blessed with solid coaching, so don't mistake this for the guy parroting the "Big LEast" rhetoric that's become remarkably tiring over the last few years.

No, this is not about how "the Big East sucks," folks. Rather, it is about the shifting landscape of college football. This is the final season of the BCS. That means the automatic bid—the gifted spot into the postseason promised land of the money bowls—only lasts for another cycle. 

That gripe is gone. The Big East, MAC, MWC, Conference USA and Sun Belt will now be forced to earn their way into one of the major bowls or the playoff.

As Sports Illustrated reported back in November, only the highest-ranked member of the outside five would be guaranteed a spot in the six major bowls. While it looks promising for the Big East, this does still mean that its best squad would have to beat out teams like Boise State to get that spot.

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This week, Monday night, Texas Athletic Director, DeLoss Dodds spoke with Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman about the state of Texas' athletic department. Dodds, through cryptic language, was hoping to galvanize the spirit of Longhorn Nation and stoke the fire behind Texas sports.

Eh, except he did a lot of talking about everybody else.

He talked about Missouri and how Texas was better than them. He mentioned the dips of Texas A&M, Michigan and Tennessee after legendary coaches. He even talked about how other schools aren't making money.

What the longtime AD needed to do was talk more about Texas and less about any school that doesn't wear burnt orange.

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Despite the fact that we’ve just entered the darkest and loneliest days of the college football offseason, oddsmakers have already turned the page to next fall.

Of course they have. There’s money to be made. 

Most sports books have had BCS national championship odds posted since before this year’s crystal football changed hands—and we’ve touched on those. More recently, though, betting odds have been posted in regard to the world’s most famous hunk of bronze.

Strike a Heisman pose in your cubicle or office. Don’t worry, we won't tell.

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Tom Sorenson of the Charlotte Observer rustled some Gamecock feathers when he suggested that stud defensive end Jadeveon Clowney should sit out the 2013 season. My colleague at the SEC Blog, Barrett Sallee, called it flat out ridiculous.

My reaction was a little less visceral. Quite honestly, it's his career and his choice, and I'm good with however it plays out. But, "what if" is fun, so let's play it. Let's look at some "what if" scenarios, because, contrary to popular opinion, there certainly is more than one.

The most boring and most likely scenario is that Clowney goes out and does exactly what we expect of him, while being serious injury free. Huge sack numbers, big tackles for loss stats, big time highlights, possible Heisman finalist and an All-American. The kid is the clear first pick overall, as he would be in this current draft, and all is well with the universe.

But, what if? What if Clowney does not have that stellar season we've come to expect from him in his two short years in the collegiate game? What if he has a nagging, not devastating injury, that causes his production to lag behind where we expect it to be? Where would Clowney end up after a less-than-stellar season? Probably still in the top spot, provided that injury heals as he gets ready for the combine.

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The recruiting landscape is changing as the NCAA pushes for deregulation on multiple fronts. More freedom for coaches to contact prospects, send mail, text, call and employ recruiting specialists. A change that cleans up some of the rulebook and allows coaches to do their own juggling in the process.

One conference is openly against these changes: The Big Ten.

For a league that's been proactive in expansion, and revolutionary in their television deal, the Big Ten has been far less than progressive where recruiting is concerned. The "recruit them until they get on campus, sell your positives and the other guys' negatives" approach to recruiting somehow got lost upon Jim Delany's league.

Most recently that was clear when Bret Bielema, former Wisconsin and current Arkansas head coach, accused newcomer Urban Meyer of "illegal" recruiting tactics. Bielema merely added fuel to a fire stoked pre-2012 signing day by Michigan State's defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi. Stealing recruits and recruiting committed players were, apparently, something the Big Ten did not want to have happen.

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There’s no fighting him here. Urban Meyer is 100 percent correct in his assessment of anemic Big Ten recruiting. The question now, however, is: Can it be fixed? And if so, how? 

Meyer has taken it upon himself to be the unofficial spokesman for a conference he’s been rooted in for approximately 15 months. His latest battle—and perhaps the final straw before Mark Dantonio finally yanks him off his Christmas list—combats the growing failures from Big Ten teams not named Ohio State and Michigan on the recruiting trail.

Meyer was outspoken regarding this while appearing on the Bishop and Rothman Show on 97.1 FM in Columbus late last week (via Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports):

For Meyer, the writing is on the wall. There’s a very real possibility that Ohio State could run the table in 2013 and be left out of the national championship game due to the nature of its “uncomplicated” schedule. We’re looking deep into the crystal ball well ahead of time, but the path is potentially a little too clear.

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