Headlinin': How bad can it get for Ohio State? Introducing the Hypothetical Pain Index.

Making the morning rounds.

• It's not all doom and gloom. Ohio State is expected to issue an official response today to Monday night's report that coach Jim Tressel knew about potential NCAA violations involving improper benefits to prominent Buckeye players at least eight months before the university was informed by the U.S. Attorney's Office last December. In the meantime, the doomsayers are having their moment – up to and including projections that the allegations could eventually cost Tressel his job if proven to be true. Well, as long as that if is hanging there, anything is possible.

Even at this stage, though, the specter of the chopping block is at the extreme end of the scale. More pressingly, the Buckeyes stand to (symbolically) lose the 12 wins and Big Ten championship earned last year with four offending players in the regular starting lineup, and possibly those players themselves, who all remain with the team and are set to return this fall after serving a five-game suspension through the first week of October. At this point, with an allegation hinging on the word of a single, anonymous source, the rubric for prospective Buckeye pain looks like this:

As entrenched as he is after a wildly successful decade on the job, Tressel will be the last to go – after the '10 season, after the remaining eligibility of the suspended players, after future scholarships. That's a pretty significant buffer. [Columbus Dispatch, Sports Illustrated]

• The Rebel's Speech. All quarterbacks trying to get on the field have something keeping them off: Too small, too slow, not enough of an arm, poor grasp of the offense, etc. Ole Miss' Randall Mackey, however, may be the only QB in the country relegated to the bench because he struggles to verbalize the play calls. He gets the calls – he just can't get them out of his mouth. "Mackey can roll out, he can throw it far, he can get it where it need to be," running back Brandon Bolden told the (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger. "It was, basically, the only thing about him, it was just in the huddle, he knew what he wanted to say, it just couldn't come out." Mackey, a junior who redshirted last season as a hyped junior college transfer, said he's worked through the issue since suffering a concussion in the eighth grade: "It just never went away." [Clarion-Ledger]

• Cowboy up. Oklahoma State kicked off spring practice Monday with a bit of a role reversal: Rather than the players learning the system from the new coach, it's offensive coordinator Todd Monken trying to get up to speed on the system that made the Cowboys one of the most explosive attacks in the country last year under departed play caller Dana Holgorsen. "Basically in three weeks, you're cramming for a test," said Monken, who comes from four years coaching the Jacksonville Jaguars' wide receivers. "Not only are you now coaching quarterbacks, you are learning a new offense and you're running the offensive meeting." The transition has been eased by Monken's relationship with quarterback Brandon Weeden, a former minor league baseball player, because Weeden "is like 38 years old. The guy has been around a while. It's like dealing with an NFL guy. … He'll tell you he doesn't like it, where a young guy won't, they'll just sit there and say, 'Yes, coach.'" For the record, Weeden is 27. [The Oklahoman, Associated Press]

• The new class. The National Football Foundation released its annual list of candidates for the College Football Hall of Fame Monday, running 79 players and nine coaches long. Among the first-timers on this year's ballot: Alabama linebacker Derrick Thomas, Nebraska quarterback Tommie Frazier, Arkansas offensive lineman Brandon Burlsworth and coaches Jimmy Johnson, Lloyd Carr, Fisher DeBerry and R.C. Slocum. They'll have to get in line behind the likes of Brian Bosworth, Eddie George, Deion Sanders and Bill McCartney, only four of the dozens of worthy names returning to the ballot after being snubbed on previous votes. [College Football Hall of Fame]

• Friday of the Children of the Corn. New Big Ten rivals Nebraska and Iowa have moved their season-ending match-up to the Friday after Thanksgiving for at least the next two years, continuing the day-after-Thanksgiving tradition the Cornhuskers have forged against Oklahoma (Big Eight) and later Colorado (Big 12) since 1990. Bonus points if you can name the division the 'Huskers and Hawkeyes will play in without looking. [Lincoln Journal Star]

Quickly… Running back Deantre Lewis looks like he'll be ready for spring practice at Arizona State, less than a month after being hit in the backside by a stray bullet. … The trials of Jedd Fisch en route to becoming Miami's offensive coordinator. … Syracuse's first day of spring practice gets snowed in. … A Rose Bowl cartoon from 1937. … And Pitt may be trying to block Villanova's Big East ambitions in football. Sounds familiar.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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