New Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi, the architect of Michigan State's vaunted defenses since 2006, took a slice of credit for Ohio State's national championship on Monday.
Specifically, Narduzzi suggested the Buckeyes replicated the Spartans' defensive scheme.
"Ohio State's facing the same problem (against offenses), because they stole our defense, too," Narduzzi told The Griff & Grinz radio program, according to transcription at Coachingsearch.com. "There's a lot of teams throughout the country. You go watch them, they're exactly us, whether they admit it or not. They're exactly us, and they weren't before. They won a national championship with the defense."
Of course, there's nothing nefarious about scheme-copying in football. It's flattery, not fraud, to be imitated, which makes Narduzzi's use of the word "stole" something of a stretch. What's not a stretch is that changing jobs to Pittsburgh didn't do much for Narduzzi's opinion of his former rivals.
Here are four other things we learned around college football camps on Monday:
*2. Cook not guilty.Florida State sophomore *Dalvin Cook was found not guilty of misdemeanor battery Monday after a one-day trial. The school announced he had been reinstated to the team soon after the verdict was revealed. It's good news for the Seminoles; it's better news for Cook, whose reputation had been damaged for allegedly punching a woman in the face.* *
3. 11th-hour coaching change. Coaching resignations in August, right before football season begins, are very rare. The resignations of coaches' sons in August might be unprecedented. But here we are: Arizona State running backs coach Bo Graham, son of Sun Devils coach Todd Graham, is packing his bags less than two weeks before ASU's season opener against Texas A&M on Sept. 5. The report at SI.com offered no insight as to why the younger Graham decided to walk away from what could be a special season at Arizona State. Indications are that the program will promote someone in-house into the vacancy -- indeed, this close to the beginning of the season, it's not as though there are many running backs coaches qualified for the job who are waiting by the phone. At this time of year, most are employed, or not employed, for a reason.
4. Settled at QB. Quarterback battles were settled at Oklahoma and at Texas A&M on Monday, with a former walk-on (Baker Mayfield) winning the former, and an incumbent (Kyle Allen) winning the other. In no more than another week, we should know the answers to some even more interesting quarterback competitions: at Ohio State, Alabama, and UCLA, among others.
5. Ships away. Freshman TE Hanner Shipley has left LSU and will transfer to Abilene Christian in Texas. It also would appear he'll be changing positions as well as schools. Shipley just signed with the Tigers for the 2015 signing class, so it's not as though he was well-entrenched on the Bayou.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread*.
