Kansas head coach Mark Mangino is entering some pretty lofty company in the Big XII, joining Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Texas' Mack Brown in the conference $2 million plus club.

The Jayhawks signed Mangino to a two-year contract extension that will keep him at KU through 2012 at roughly $2.3 million per year. The new extension makes the Kansas coach the 13th highest paid college football coach in the country.

Mangino's new deal includes an increased payout in several incentives that could push the coach's salary even higher, including a $1.5 million longevity payment if he stays at KU through 2012.

From the Kansas City Star, here's at look at Mangino's incentives:

$225,000 ...

Get ready for a good, old-fashioned SWC red-out.

The University of Houston has agreed to a home-and-home football series with Texas Tech, beginning in 2009.

The first game will be played on Sept. 26, 2009, at Robertson Stadium, with the second game set for Sept. 25, 2010, at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock.

The Cougars have not played the Red Raiders since the dissolution of the Southwest Conference after the 1995 season.

Here's a little tidbit that may surprise some fellow bloggers who are always so gung-ho for Texas Tech....

UH leads the all-time series with Tech 17-10-1.

Kudos to both teams for inking this game. Texas Tech tends to do fairly well with keeping its OOC schedule at the mid-major level (or above), but an OOC game against Tech is certainly a welcome addition to ...

Inspired by several bloggers who do their "top 100 things for the season", I'm inspired to share five things I want to see this season....

1) Is someone ready to rise up and knock USC off their Pac10 perch? Despite the recent success of Oregon (and Cal, to a lesser degree) there has not been a consistent challenger to Pete Carroll's throne. I think it's just a matter of time before Dennis Ericksson and Arizona State rise to the top of the conference, but can the Sun Devils unseat the Trojans? Does UCLA finally have its man with Neuheisel at the helm? Can Cal get back to the top? Is Oregon going to be a year-in, year-out player? I'm still putting my chips on ASU as the most likely contender, but... when?

2) Tim Tebow (ie Superman Surgeon) was the best player in college football last year and RIGHTFULLY won the Heisman. Can Tebow be the first guy to repeat since the ...

Faithful readers of fanblogs will notice that a lot of what this article contains has been stated by me in the past. That's because I thought it as being so well-written that I could regurgitate it once again in order to preempt any more uniform threads from popping up like weeds in the parched earth here at fanblogs during the dry season.

The bee in my bonnet about national championships came last spring when Washington tried to slip one through the back door 47 years after the fact. Since then, I've quit wearing bonnets and have educated myself on the history of the national championship. I now feel qualified to be the final arbiter of which teams' national championship claims are legit, and which are as bogus as a Jeff Spicoli quip.

Here are the qualifications that I will use:

1) Only current Divison 1-A (FBS) teams with three or more MNCs ...

The USA Today has an exceptionally interesting follow-up story to the May release of the 2008 Academic Progress Rates (APR) results of the Division I schools. What makes this article particularly interesting is that it more fully vets the notion that the BCS conference receive favorable consideration from the NCAA.

Citing analysis from the Knight Commission, the USA Today article states that BCS conference teams only half as likely to be punished as non-BCS teams for failing to meet the assigned APR minimums.

"The NCAA's heart is in the right place. They want to improve the academic performance ...

Here's yet another entry in the long line of 2008-2009 college football bowl game predictions - this time from ESPN.

FedEx BCS National Championship Game
(BCS No. 1 vs. BCS No. 2) Georgia Bulldogs vs. Ohio State Buckeyes

Tostitos Fiesta
(BCS vs. BCS) Oklahoma Sooners vs. BYU Cougars

Allstate Sugar
(BCS vs. BCS) Auburn Tigers vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders

FedEx Orange
(BCS vs. BCS) West Virginia Mountaineers vs. Clemson Tigers

Rose Bowl presented by Citi
(BCS vs. BCS) USC Trojans vs. Wisconsin Badgers

A few other notables.....

Capital One
(SEC vs. Big Ten) Florida Gators vs. Illinois Fighting Illini ...