The biggest news today is that Mitchell Carter is seeking to transfer to a smaller school where he can get some playing time to wrap up his college career. Carter is a somewhat highly recruited big man that never seemed to come into his own at Carolina. Moreover, Carter, a massive post-up type of center, definitely doesn't fit Darrin Horn's ideal lineup, which favors more athletic, oftentimes smaller players. Horn presented the issue as mutual and says it has nothing to do with opening up a scholarship, although I'm sure Horn's not upset about having a scholarship to burn should an opportunity present itself. I think Carter's departure is probably for the best for both sides; as Seth Emerson points out, the confusing thing is that he didn't check out earlier, as in when Horn was hired.
Other NCAA News
As ESPN reports, the American Football Coaches Association are considering changing some of their USA Today poll rules. The proposed changes? Questionable, to say the least. For one, they're thinking about no longer releasing the names of the voters. (Note that the AP poll releases both the names of the voters and their weekly votes, whereas the Coaches just release the names of the voters.) There are good reasons for releasing these names, because, as the article notes,
Critics have noted that voters have a financial stake in the outcome because their conferences benefit from drawing lucrative BCS berths. There are also questions of favoritism toward friends and bias against rivals.
AFCA exec Grant Teaff claims that
The perception is that there's a huge bias, and we've never really found that.
However, I would have to disagree. There's too much at stake, both in terms of personal pride and animosity and sheer cash, for bias not to work its way in to these votes sometimes. A little bit of transparency makes it harder for that to happen, and I think that's good for a sport that suffers from legitimacy issues at times.