DeMaurice Smith

DeMaurice Smith and look forward to working with him and the NFLPA board to ensure the continued health and growth of our game.” Smith, who’s regarded widely as a compromise choice since former NFL players Troy Vincent and Trace Armstrong were expected to split the voting, has his work cut out for him with labor unrest after NFL owners opted out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Smith succeeds the late Executive Director Gene Upshaw, beating out Troy Vincent, Trace Armstrong, and David Cornwell. We just received an e-mail two minutes ago from the NFLPA media relations department confirming that Smith has been named the new Executive Director and that a press release will be issued soon. Don Banks of SI.com writes that Smith, a Washington attorney who’s a partner at Patton Boggs, was elected on the first ballot.

Moments ago, the NFL Players Association elected attorney DeMaurice Smith as its new Executive Director following an intense search process that culminated with a final vote conducted by player representatives in Hawaii, Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Daily reports. Mullen cited player representatives for her report. An official announcement is forthcoming.

Espn Bracketology

ESPN Bracketology fame, the man who successfully picked all 65 teams in last year's tournament field, had eight teams from the Big Ten going into Friday's action. Jerry Palm, of collegerpi.com, also had eight Big Ten teams in the field. His selections also were going into Friday's play. Coming out of Friday, however, I have to think Penn State, Minnesota and Michigan are going to have a long 36 hours or so until Selection Sunday rolls around.

My personal take right now is that five Big Ten teams should be locked (Michigan State, Purdue, Illinois, Ohio State and Wisconsin in that order), while Minnesota and Michigan have probably also done enough. So I would go with seven. But I think Penn State's play against Purdue Friday night, coupled with a few other upsets in conference tournaments around the country, have the Nittany Lions in a precarious position.

Penn State is 22-11 with quality wins against Michigan State, Illinois (twice) and Purdue, all within the conference. The Lions also beat Georgia Tech on the road in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. But in the last three games, Penn State lost in double overtime at Iowa, beat an IU team with an RPI of 211 in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament and then gave up 51 points in the first half Friday to Purdue before losing by 14.