With a morning practice Tuesday and an evening scrimmage tonight, there's a rare weekday stretch of 36 hours or so without a football practice -- probably won't have that again until a bye week.

This fall's preseason camp has been notable for its brevity -- shorter afternoon practices and just three days of two-a-day practices if the schedule holds up. The post-practice conditioning runs, best known because USF coach Jim Leavitt runs them with his players, have been nearly absent, as the coach has moved to a practice model that includes less conditioning and more direct competition between the top units.

"We've gotten a lot done in 15 practices," said Leavitt, whose team will scrimmage again Saturday before starting a regular practice-week schedule next week as fall classes begin. "We're getting closer to our two deep and a couple extra on who we think we'll take into the season."

-- Found this interesting -- there are few places in the state that you couldn't use Gators quarterback Tim Tebow as a metaphor for all things good, successful, strong, fast, etc., but Lakeland is the hometown of a different college quarterback.

So Tuesday in Lakeland, at a meeting in support of bringing a high-speed rail to Central Florida, former Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik made the easy parallel: "“We believe that high-speed rail is the Tim Tebow of Florida transportation. It is the game changer,” Turanchik said, according to the Lakeland Ledger.

The folks who put out the Twitter.com page for USF Polytechnic, USF's Lakeland campus, took exception to the comparison, sending out a tweet with the quote and two words: "Or Grothe?"

-- National story on USF with lots of Grothe and George Selvie at USAtoday.com today -- if Jack Carey's writing it, I imagine it's in the newspaper as well.

-- CBSsports.com's Dennis Dodd has his Big East preview up, with USF picked to finish second and Grothe and Selvie the lone Bulls on his preseason all-conference team. Selvie, their league defensive player of the year, also makes their Big East All-Decade team. There's a poll there on who will win the Big East, and with more than 5,000 votes, USF ranks fifth in the balloting with just 11 percent.

-- Update on former USF quarterback Grant Gregory, who is battling for the starting job at Kansas State.

-- Collegefootballnews.com looks at college football's 30 quarterbacks of the future, and USF's B.J. Daniels ekes in at No. 30. Two other Big East players make the cut -- Rutgers' Tom Savage at No. 27 and West Virginia's Eugene Smith at No. 17.

-- We've neglected to update the "biggest Missouri football win ever" online polling at RockMnation.com, which had a few games involving Mizzou grad Jim Leavitt. Alas, the final four doesn't include any games he played in, though he was a grad assistant for the 1978 win against Nebraska. Not sure which is funnier -- this shoutout, or the comments on that post.

-- Phil Fulmer coaching at USF? The Hard Knox Sports blog, speculating where the former Tennessee coach might resurface, includes USF among nine speculative options. "This is another school that will only make a change if
Jim Leavitt leaves the Bulls for another school," they write. Louisville and Pittsburgh are also included as options ...