Jason Eck

I found the info on Eddie Faulkner in a roundabout way: searching for info on Jason Eck. Who the heck is Jason Eck? you ask.

He was a backup lineman for the Badgers in the late 1990s. Didn't play much, but I did remember the name.

So why the heck was I searching for info on Jason Eck? Because he apparently wrote something very funny on Twitter and I wanted to see it. What was it? According to ESPN.com columnist Pat Forde, Eck had this to say on the Sunday before the season started:

"Players off today … unlike Michigan."

Ha! Funny stuff. But I say "apparently" because when I visited Eck's Twitter page, the post Forde references is gone. Guess the Ball State athletic department staff got a little squeamish about having something so candid attached to it out there. Don't want to insult Mighty Michigan when they're going through a rough patch, do we?

It's this sort of sporting political correctness that leaves us with boring drones like Bill Belichick and Mike McCarthy filling the airwaves and reporters' notebooks with bland cliches that tell us nothing. Give Eck credit for being clever, even if, judging by his team's season opening performance, it appears that some Sunday practice might help them.

Sheesh, Testicle Tech (as my old boss in Fremont used to call Ball State; it's clever, get it?) needs to get some balls.

Eddie Faulkner

Cruising around the Internet during the Badger game the other night, I discovered that Eddie Faulkner is the offensive coordinator/running backs coach at Ball State. Eddie's from Muncie, Ind., so it's nice that he was able to end up in his hometown.

He's been at Ball State for five years, and that was a pretty damn good offense they had last year. This year got off to a little bit rougher start, though, they lost their opener to North Texas, one of the worst teams in college football.

I remember doing a feature on Eddie, think it was 1997, when he was backing up Ron Dayne during one of the latter's rare injury periods. He was one of those solid backups that provided the Badgers with quality depth and helped the program reach new heights in the late 1990s.

Glad that Eddie's getting a shot at being a coordinator in a Division 1 program, hopefully it leads to bigger and better things for him.