As a sophomore last season, LSU cornerback Tyrann Mathieu was a first team All-American, the Bednarik winner and the only defensive finalist for the Heisman. And oh, yeah, he earned that "Honey Badger" nickname too.

So, entering 2012, Mathieu (@TM7_Era) is widely expected to repeat the success of last year. And, on Friday night, he took to Twitter to declare himself the best player in college football. Quite capitally, in fact.

In the tweet precluding that, Mathieu declared that revenge was "best served like steak: well done," which inevitably induced a flood of Alabama and National Championship related tweets. (Though more people are likely to take issue with Mathieu's steak preference.) Just Monday, Mathieu and Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron exchanged banter on Twitter about the rivalry's next matchup on November 3 after Mathieu dared anyone to throw a corner or cross country route on him.

In the tweet immediately after his declaration, Mathieu made a prediction:

In all honesty,

(US Presswire)

The Big Ten/Pac-12 college football challenge is over before it even began.

In a joint statement by Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, the two sides agreed the series that was announced last December had met resistance by some Pac-12 schools and had to be scuttled.

When news surfaced of Joe Paterno's connection with a child sex scandal at Penn State, former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden proclaimed that he only wanted to remember the good things about his friend of 50 years.

"I don't remember the bad things," Bowden told the Palm Beach Post. "He didn't have many bad things."

And now he says he doesn't want anyone else to remember the bad things either. That's why during a radio interview with Cory Giger, Bowden asked for Paterno's famed statue on the Penn State campus to be taken down.

"Should his statue be removed? In my opinion, yes," Bowden said. "Now the reason is, Penn State's job now is to try to forget this thing. But every time somebody walks by and sees that statue, they're not going to remember the 80 good years, they're going to remember this thing with (former assistant coach Jerry) Sandusky.

"Just think, every time you go to a ballgame at Penn State and they shine a camera on that statue, that's going to be brought up again. So if I was Penn State, if I was Joe's family, I'd say, move on from all that stuff."

(US Presswire)

Former Penn State linebacker LaVar Arrington once defended the "Penn State Way" of keeping things in the family, but on Thursday he acknowledged he didn't really know that family at all.

"If you really think about it, how much do I really know [coach Joe Paterno]?" Arrington told the "Wetzel to Forde" radio show. "How much do we really know him? I know the coaching figure - just like with Jerry Sandusky, I knew the coaching figure. I mean, there's obvious ways of looking at this right now with 20-20 hindsight, but I didn't know the person I thought I did."

A new conference means new uniforms for Texas A&M.

Adidas rolled out some snazzy new Lone Star TECHFIT uniforms that were inspired by the uniforms Texas A&M teams used to wear in the 1970s.

According to A&M's website, "the Aggies' new look pays homage to the rich tradition of Texas A&M football and celebrates the bright future in College Station."

(Andrew Weber/US Presswire)

While many are waiting for the NCAA to step in and issue some sort of death penalty against Penn State for its lack of institutional control following the release of the Freeh report, which detailed a university-wide cover-up of sexual abuse by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, the harshest penalties could be coming from the Department of Education (DOE).

John Infante, who created bylawblog.com and used to work for NCAA.org, stated on Twitter that: "Dept. of Ed could prohibit Penn State from receiving federal student aid…. Prohibiting a school from receiving federal financial aid is the DOE's death penalty. But we're in "If not here, then where?" territory."

Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium is embracing beer.

The University of Minnesota Regents voted Wednesday to allow beer sales during Minnesota home football games. The measure was approved 10-1 and could bring in as much as $1.5 million yearly in extra revenue to the university.

Minnesota now joins 21 universities that sell beer in their stadiums on football Saturdays, though the bulk of those teams play in a city-owned or pro sports venues. Schools such as Louisiana-Lafayette, Memphis, Akron and Maryland started public beer sales in 2009 and West Virginia approved a measure to start selling beer inside its stadium last year.

Minnesota will be the first Big Ten school to offer alcohol sales outside of its suites.

The once impeccable legacy of the late Joe Paterno continued to get hammered Thursday, first with the much-anticipated release of the Freeh Report followed by afternoon news that the Joe Paterno Child Development Center on the Nike campus in Beaverton, Ore., would be renamed.