The odds of a team winning the BCS championship game according to Caesar’s Palace on July 6.

OPEN    CURRENT
                                        ----    -------
                   U-S-C                 2-1      -150
                   MIAMI-FLORIDA        10-1      10-1
                   TEXAS                12-1       8-1
                   MICHIGAN             12-1       9-1
                   IOWA                 15-1      15-1
                   FLORIDA STATE        15-1      25-1
                   OKLAHOMA             18-1      12-1
                   TENNESSEE            18-1      18-1
                   FLORIDA              20-1      10-1
                   VIRGINIA TECH        20-1      15-1
                   L-S-U                25-1      25-1
                   TEXAS A&M            25-1      45-1
                   OHIO STATE           30-1       7-1
                   LOUISVILLE           30-1      35-1
                   ALABAMA              35-1      30-1
                   MINNESOTA            35-1      50-1
                   FRESNO STATE         40-1      60-1
                   GEORGIA              40-1      45-1
...
                        BOWLING GREEN       150-1     350-1
                   TEXAS TECH          175-1     300-1
                   PENN STATE          175-1      80-1
                   UTAH                175-1     400-1
                   CALIFORNIA          200-1      65-1
                   NORTH CAROLINA      200-1     500-1
                   TEXAS-EL PASO       250-1     500-1
                   WEST VIRGINIA       300-1     300-1
                   COLORADO            400-1     250-1
                   NOTRE DAME          500-1      75-1
                   PITTSBURGH          600-1     500-1
                   SYRACUSE            700-1     700-1
                   BOISE STATE          50-1     200-1

I find it interesting to see which alumni have really moved the betting lines up and down. Gives you a better sense of their perspective on reality.

Chris Taft hurt his back during a summer league game when he threw down a reverse dunk. He suffered back spasms, and missed one game and is likely to miss another.

Taft had been impressing people in the summer league, and definitely has played with determination.

Taft’s potential is clear after just three summer league games. There’s no doubt why he once was considered one of the top post player in last month’s NBA draft, why the Warriors happily jumped on him when he was available at No. 42. Just 20 years old and at 6-foot-10 and 261 pounds, he certainly has the makings of a solid, if not dominant, post player.

What has to make the Warriors happy, even more than his obvious promise, is that he’s been playing with purpose. The most common knock on Taft, a University of Pittsburgh product, is that he doesn’t play hard unless he’s motivated. But he’s clearly driven this summer league, mostly by slipping so far in the draft.

He’s still raw and doesn’t go all out every play; on occasion he trots to the defensive end. But his play has been marked by spurts of assertiveness and physicality.

He isn’t dominating games or embarrassing opponents, but he’s showing the Warriors some of what they need to see.

“He’s really explosive and he plays hard,” fellow Warriors rookie power forward Ike Diogu said. “He’s going to be really good. … He’s pretty strong. He can hold his own down low. He’s a big body and he has some nice moves down low.”

His averages of 7.3 points and 5.3 rebounds in 15.3 minutes are good numbers, but they don’t convey the passion he has shown.

His GM speaks well of him and a story was recounted of their meeting at their old high school.

A little game of 2-on-2 ensued with Mullin and Taft matched against each other. It was a Brooklyn schooling Taft has not forgotten.

“He shot my lights off that game,” Taft recalled. “He was just shooting and shooting and I couldn’t defend him.”

Keep in mind that Taft was only a sophomore at the time, and not nearly as big and tall.

Meanwhile, present Pitt player Levon Kendall has been playing and practicing with the Canadian national team as they prepare to play in the world qualification tournament next month. He has gotten raves from his coach.

Rautins expects to have more than 20 players start a camp at Toronto’s Humber College that will run until Tuesday, among the most prominent being Vancouver’s Levon Kendall, coming off a solid season at the University of Pittsburgh.

“He’s a really good player, 6-10 with small-forward skills,” said Rautins. “If he was European, all the NBA guys would be saying we’ve got to get him over here.”

Hopefully Kendall’s confidence is being rebuilt. He showed flashes for a few games, then he just seemed to lose confidence, playing time and then was gone from the rotation.

The change to the Big East bowl relationship with the Gator and agreement with the Sun Bowl is discussed here.

This is the first time two bowls have gotten together to share conference ties.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that if this is successful, it’s absolutely the wave of the future,” Gator Bowl president Rick Catlett said. “It’s important to us to have flexibility to create favorable matchups.”

Under the plan, each bowl may select either a Big East team or Notre Dame twice in the four-year span.

The rotation between the Big East/Notre Dame and the Big 12 is up to the bowls.

“We can select them any way we want to,” Catlett said. “Obviously, if we select a Big East team two years in a row, then we’d be in a position where we’d have to select a Big 12 team the last two years. But we could do 1-1-1-1 or 1-2-1 or 2-2.”

In all four years of the plan, the Atlantic Coast Conference will provide the opponent in the Gator Bowl and the Pacific-10 will play in the Sun.

When selecting a Big East team, both bowls will have the first pick after the league’s representative in the Bowl Championship Series is named. It is not yet determined where the Gator and Sun stand in the Big 12’s pecking order.

The setup is important because it allows the Big East to hang onto a New Year’s Day bowl berth. The Gator Bowl will be played Jan. 1, and the Sun is set for New Year’s Eve.

“The Big East has a consistent and successful history of being unique and entrepreneurial,” Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said.

Tranghese said the two leagues, bowls and Notre Dame “had the foresight to realize that we could accomplish more collectively than we could as individual entities, a trend that I clearly think is good for the future of college athletics.”

Catlett first proposed a sharing plan eight years ago during a meeting with conference commissioners in Atlanta. He said the Big East was interested from the start.

Part of the reason for the agreement is that the bowls were starting to see the same teams over and over in the bowls.

“Texas just finished playing in the Holiday Bowl for the third time in four years and we had West Virginia back-to-back, and it’s just nuts to do that,” Catlett said. “It’s an attempt to put new teams in and to create matchups beneficial to the games and for the fans.”

With this agreement, the Sun Bowl is upping the amount it pays out from around $1.575 million per team to $1.85 million. CBS has also renewed its TV contract to carry the bowl.

The Big East isn’t done working on the time share bowl plans. Afterall, there is still the loss of the relationship with the Insight.com Bowl to address.

Or will it? Tranghese said he’s continuing to work on ““three additional deals” and that “an announcement will be made shortly.”

Sources tell yours truly the Big East is negotiating with the Autozone Liberty Bowl in Memphis as well as the Gaylord Hotels Music Bowl in Nashville, Motor City Bowl in Detroit and, a long shot, the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

If Tranghese could swing a shared deal with, say, Memphis and Charlotte, the Big East would be in fine shape. Word is the Liberty could land a deal with the Southeastern Conference.

There may an initial stigma or vagabond-esque complaint about this, but I actually kind of like the plan. If the point of continuing the bowl system was to create some match-ups not seen too often because of geography and conferences, then the system wasn’t working. This adds some real variety to it. The fact that the Big XII and some of the other BCS conferences are apparently interested and involved helps.