Florida State football, recruiting news: Coaching positions in flux

- ESPN's Mark Schlabach speaks to the coaches Steve Spurrier traded verbal barbs with the most. As much as I hated Spurrier as a young FSU fan he certainly made the rivalry fun. It didn't hurt that Bowden seemed to equally enjoy with needling Spurrier.

"He's a natural-born needler," Bowden said. "He's the needler champion of the world. I don't care who he played, he was going to needle them. He needled me, but I thought it was funny. The 'Free Shoes University,' I thought was very clever. I never took it personally because I always respected him."

- ESPN's Jared Shanker and Andrea Adelson sat down with Roberto Aguayo.

- Steve Jones from the Courier-Journal notes Fisher is giving the Cardinals a lot of respect and for good reason.

"We have to get ready to play a very, very good Louisville team who is very dynamic, who has had some tough losses on the season," Fisher said Wednesday morning on the ACC coaches' teleconference. "They could be sitting there 5-0 just as easy."

- FSU's players and coaches are no strangers to Louisville QB Lamar Jackson.

"I've seen him on film enough. I didn't sleep much the night before," Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher said of Jackson on Monday. "He gave me a headache. That guy can throw, he can run. We recruited him. I liked him out of high school. I thought the guy was a very dynamic player, really, really good player. Run it, throw it, everything."

- Steve Sarkisian's firing from USC is just another drop in the bucket for the legendary program writes Matt Hinton.

The implications of a midseason coaching change seem especially bleak in light of the Trojans’ recent history. USC has been in a near-constant state of flux for more than five years, beginning with Pete Carroll’s departure for the NFL in early 2010 and the heavy-handed NCAA sanctions that followed that summer. Lane Kiffin never gained much traction, blew a preseason no. 1 ranking in 2012, and got the boot barely a month into the 2013 campaign.