Did you know that Tommie Frazier wasn't in the College Football Hall of Fame? Me neither. It begs the question exactly what it takes to make it to this elite group of the .002 of the college football players to ever play the game. However, that travesty of all travesties is about to come to an end, at least according to Matt Hayes of The Sporting News. 

Source tells Sporting News: Tommie Frazier has been elected to College Football Hall of Fame.

— Matt Hayes(@Matt_HayesSN) May 6, 2013

The official announcement of the class of 2013 for the College Football Hall of Fame will be made tomorrow afternoon.

For those of us who grew up in the 90's and were college football fans it's likely the name Tommie Frazier is etched into your memory. How can it not be? All the guy did was led the Huskers to back-to-back National Championships in 1995 and 1996 over teams like Miami and Florida. Or, how about the fact that he still holds all sorts of season and career records at Nebraska?

Just days after the SEC announced plans for the SEC Network and suggested it would be like nothing we have seen before, comes a report suggesting that the Big Ten is still going to be on pretty solid ground with their own network.

Each Big Ten school will receive a payout of $25.7 million this year, including a $7.6 million payout from the Big Ten Network according to a report by St. Louis Dispatch. The figures for these payouts was obtained by the St. Louis paper through a review of University of Illinois documents. As the report states, and to the surprise of nobody perhaps, the Big Ten continues to pay out more money to their conference members than any other conference.

Each Big Ten school received $24.6 million from the Big Ten a season ago, with $8.1 million coming from the Big Ten Network pot of gold. So total revenue shares increased by nearly one million this year but the Big Ten Network cut dipped. Why is that? This is a result of Nebraska now being eligible for a full revenue share after completing a second year in the Big Ten. The Big Ten Network share may have dipped but nobody is exactly close to shedding a tear for the Big Ten members given the overall increase in revenue shares.

Teddy Bridgewater and Louisville figure to be the team to beat in their first, and final, year in The American. Photo: USA Today Sports

Crystal Ball Run will be previewing each conference for the 2013 season with week-by-week coverage. Today we officially kick off our 2013 conference previews with a look at The American Athletic Conference.

The American Conference is here. Yes, this year's college football season will include a brand new conference of sorts, a hybrid of the Big East and Conference USA. The Big East is no more as far as college football is concerned, one of the casualties to conference realignment, but the programs left over have teamed up with a handful of programs from Conference USA, and more will be on the way in 2014. What we have now is a conference that returns a BCS bowl victor looking to make a run at a BCS championship game appearance with a Heisman hopeful leading the offense. Will anyone be able to challenge them or is it clearly Louisville's conference to lose in 2013? We will dig a little deeper in to the conference as the week progresses, but for now let's recap just how we reached this point.

This may never get old, we hope. Florida assistant coach Joker Phillips got our week started with yet another fun little Photoshop job, or perhaps it was an MS Paint job for all we know. This time Phillips takes us in to space to try and recruit wide receivers to come play for him.

#Gators are leaders, not followers. #comeplaywrforthejoker twitter.com/jokerphillips/…

— Joker Phillips (@jokerphillips) May 6, 2013

What will he think of next?

It is probably safe to say that we all recognize Indiana as a basketball school. The Hoosiers have built a long-standing rich tradition when it comes to college hoops. Bobby Knight helped build Indiana basketball to what it continues to be to this day as they have resurfaced as a Big Ten power. It's OK for a college football blog to recognize the Hoosiers at a basketball school.

Apparently it is also OK for Indiana football coach Kevin Wilson to recognize the basketball tradition in Bloomington.

Looking to show off the improved athleticism of the Indiana football program, Wilson had his football players participate in a dunk contest, and some of these guys have some jam skills. the football Hoosiers may not be quite the sensation Florida Gulf Coast is, but it's also not everyday we see big football players showing off their hops and dunks on camera. Thankfully, Indiana thought it would be a good idea to share this fun with the Internet.

You can check out the highlights with this video here, and then check out the individual player videos after the jump.

We got an early start to our weekends with another hangout on Google+. Crystal Ball Run staffers Kevin McGuire and Andy Coppens were joined by a silent but chatting Pat Johnston as well as guests Brandon Cavanaugh from Corn Nation and the man known simply as The Subway Domer.

Over the course of the hour we talked mostly about the SEC Network and its impact on the conference and the college football world (while at one point getting sidetracked and talking about how Michigan and Ohio State should be played in the afternoon). The other main topic of conversation revolved around the NCAA's decision to go back on their recruiting rules and limit the number of calls and texts etc. that may be sent to recruits.

Oh, we also reflected briefly on this high school film of Barry Sanders and discussed which athletes we'd like to go back in time and watch high school film of. Bo Jackson? Herschel Walker?

You can watch our entire Google+ hangout below, or just hit play and let it run in a minimized browser window or tab while you go about your business.

Be sure to stay tuned for word of our next hangout. We will settle on a day and time and share the details with you as soon as possible. To stay up to date though, connect with us on Google+.

Follow Crystal Ball Run on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

"Stay calm, and you'll all get out of this alive!"

You know you're getting old when you hear about an intriguing new venture like the SEC Network and your first thought is, "How much is this going to cost me?"

Welcome to my world. Creaky joints. A malingering sense of ennui that comes from growing up listening to grunge. Bitching about having an extra 80 cents tacked on to your cable every month.

Unfortunately, you do start sounding like your parents, too. As in, “What’s wrong with the college football you’ve already got?”

Hey Bill, which way to Ireland? Photo: USA Today Sports

Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien has been discussing the idea of playing a game in Ireland for months. As he makes the rounds via bus this week on a coaches bus tour to meet and greet alumni, O'Brien said with a smirk to reports and fans that Penn State was getting much closer to having a game in Ireland officially on the schedule, but nobody knew just how serious to take his remarks or exactly how "soon" was considered soon. We also had no idea who the opponent could be.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, it could be in 2014.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Friday morning that Central Florida and Penn State were in talks to open the 2014 season in Ireland. The game would require some managing of schedules at both schools in order to handle some conflicts with existing season opening plans in 2014, but it appears as though there is some actual momentum for the idea of the Nittany Lions and Golden Knights to open the season across the pond.

Poor Mark Emmert. Even when the guy tries to do something right, it always turns out horribly, unmistakably wrong.

When Emmert first took the job back in the summer of 2010, one of his big platforms was to streamline the NCAA’s famously bulky rule book, and eliminate a lot of petty, unimportant guidelines. At the time it was seen as an important first step for both sides, as a way for the NCAA to stop wasting their time investigating insignificant things, and as a way for schools not to get hit for breaking rules that weren’t really rules. As officials said at the time, the NCAA was essentially too busy chasing people who ran red lights rather than the bank robbers themselves.

Well to his credit, Emmert pushed through quite a bit of that legislation this past year, which was aimed to eliminate some of those rules. It passed in February, with the biggest change allowing for college coaches to have unlimited contact with prospective student-athletes. In the process, this rule was again supposed to help schools avoid getting hit for dumb penalties, like making a few too many phone calls or dropping a few too many texts during a recruiting cycle.

Stop the presses.

Drop the mic.

It’s over.

Even though it’s only May 2, our friends over at BarkingCarnival.com have officially won the award for the “YouTube Find of 2013.” The video is embedded above, and is a never-before-seen (at least by us) high school highlight tape of Barry Sanders’.

And by the way... It's real. And it's spectacular.