Greeson: Even June trivia big in college football

photo UT coach Butch Jones signs autographs before the Orange and White game at Neyland Stadium.

It's June, and in the South that means one thing.

Time for the craziness that comes with the college football offseason.

Be it the zingers from coaches' speeches, the police blotters or the other-worldly stories of passion and pride and presumption that make college football fanatics nod and the rest of the sports world shake their heads, June is the harbinger of such tomfoolery.

Where to start?

• Butch Jones played to a nice crowd in Cleveland last week, as Times Free Press columnist Mark Wiedmer and our University of Tennessee beat reporter Patrick Brown reported. The stories were nice and newsworthy, since Marlin Lane is now back with the Volunteers.

Here's a question for all the Johnny Vols Fans out there: Where does the mercurial Lane rank on the "need him to deliver" scale? It has to be pretty high up there - right? - considering it would be tough to put one of the question-mark QBs there or a freshman wideout such as MarQuez North on that list. (Side note: If your first name has two syllables, here's hoping you would seriously look into that second capitalized letter. That is top-notch.)

• All the hubbub about Alabama coach Nick Saban coming to McMinn County tonight officially has reached out of control. There was an Associated Press story on it Monday that went nationally.

If Nick Saban recruited in the forest and no one was there to see it, did it actually happen? Most likely no, but a five-star oak likely would commit to the Crimson Tide.

• This is a little more than football, but who is doing it better than Louisville right now? The Cardinals won the Sugar Bowl and will be preseason top 10 in 2013 in football, won the NCAA hoops tourney, got to the NCAA women's title game and now are headed to the College World Series in baseball.

• OK, there are now two eighth-graders with football scholarship offers from major college power programs. First there was Dylan Moses, a 6-foot-1, 213-pound linebacker from University Lab High School in Louisiana who has offers from Alabama, LSU, Texas, Florida and the rest of the upper crust of the college football world. (Side note:

If you are a 6-1, 213-pound middle school linebacker who ran a clocked 4.5 40, then you should go to a school named University Lab, because you are a science experiment.)

Now Lane Kiffin and his guardians of dignity have made an offer to Nathan Tilford, a 6-2, 190-pound receiver who also just finished the eighth grade.

• Harvey Updyke was released from jail Monday after serving six months for assassinating the oaks at Toomer's Corner. He will remain on five years of supervised probation, which includes a 7 p.m. curfew, not talking to the media, not going on Auburn's campus, not attending any collegiate sporting event and playing the lead role as Johnny Appleseed in the Opelika community theater. OK, we made that last one up, but so it goes.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com

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