With the NFL back with a vengeance, there were three unrelated news stories today about getting down and dirty in the world of college football.

First off, the headlining news, Purdue receiver Selwyn Lymon was stabbed at a night club. Lymon is in fair condition, until Coach Tiller gets his hands on him that is:

Tiller said Lymon was “not very important (to the team) right now, because of his behavior, because of the choices he makes. Period.”

“This is not the first time I’ve had some questions about his motives. Probably won’t be the last,” he said.

Lymon missed spring practice last year because he was academically ineligible, and he missed one game last season after getting shot in the eye with a paintball pellet by one of his teammates.

Damn coach, that’s cold… but I guess if the guy is dumb enough to get shot in the eye with a paintball during the season, it’s probably best you put the kid into his place.

Then, you’ve got Harvey “Scooter” McDougle Jr., who is a football player at the University of Toledo, was arraigned with the suspicion that he may have helped shave points for favors from someone named “Gary”.

“Gary” allegedly invited the athletes to gamble and dine at Greektown Casino in Detroit. One player was offered $10,000 to sit out a football game, while others received cash, groceries, merchandise and other gifts, the complaint said.

McDougle, a 22-year-old senior from East Cleveland, Ohio, told FBI investigators he received a car, telephone and other items of value from “Gary,” but insisted he never changed the way he played to affect the outcome of games.

I think in this case, my real beef is with “Gary”, who is a complete moron for attempting to fix Toledo games. It’s not going to take Matlock to figure out something is fishy when there is an obscene amount of money riding on a friggin Toledo game.

And finally, Oklahoma is getting heat for claiming that they were completely unaware that like half their players all “worked” at the car dealership which paid Rhett Bomar and led to Bomar’s dismissal. The NCAA seems to think that Oklahoma should actually be keeping track of their players and making sure that nothing shady is going on… wow, what a concept.

“We … assert that the University met, if not exceeded, industry standards regarding our student-athlete employment monitoring,” University President David Boren said in a letter dated March 7, which was obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request.

“There were no other reasonable additional steps we could have taken that would have prevented these violations or detected them any sooner,” Boren said in the letter.

The NCAA has claimed that Oklahoma violated its own guidelines by failing to collect earnings statements from 12 football players who worked at the dealership, and as a result did not detect NCAA rules violations.

Wow, that sucks. Yea, nothing else we could have done… except of course follow our own guidelines… that could have helped.

Oklahoma said that to have learned of the deception earlier than it did, the university would have had to require copies of time-clock records, paycheck stubs and W-2 tax information, that such a requirement was “unrealistic” and that even if additional monitoring had occurred, it wouldn’t have caught the violations in the case.

Wait… so a football player gets paid like full time wages, plus plays football and “goes” to school and that wouldn’t have raised enough red flags to catch it? So the NCAA calls you on your lie, and the best response that a school of higher learning could come up with was, “well, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.” Really? That’s it? That’s just pathetic.

• Football player in fair condition as coach considers discipline (AP)
• College football player faces federal point shaving charges (AP)
• Oklahoma disputes NCAA monitoring allegation (AP)