Bulls, Bearcats underway, plus links!

USF and Cincinnati are underway here at Bright House Field, and I've got a handful of links to offer up for your perusal during tonight's game. First, an update -- already! -- as Cincinnati's Tony Campana led off the game with a triple (his eighth!) and scored to give the Bearcats a 1-0 lead early.

-- Roger Mooney of the Bradenton Herald writes about former USF receiver Amarri Jackson enjoying life as an NFL rookie, taking cues from Derrick Brooks and cramming on that Bucs playbook, which has 300 more offensive plays than USF's did.

-- Used to be, SI.com's Stewart Mandel was as steady a USF advocate as you'd find among the national writers, but he clearly doesn't think as much of the Bulls in 2008. His latest mailbag discusses how wide-open the Big East should be this fall -- he curiously writes about West Virginia and "the entirely realistic possibility of that program suffering a Louisville-type implosion." Anyway, Mandel references five other Big East teams before he gets to USF, writing that "South Florida, if it can ever maintain any level of consistency, has shown it can play with just about anyone." So the only two schools not mentioned as contenders are Louisville and Syracuse. My, how the Cards have fallen ...

--  Baseball? Sure! One of USF's signees for next season, catcher Adrian Nieto, is rated as the No. 73 overall prospect in this year's draft, according to Baseball America. (I'd link, but it's premium subscriber information ...) That makes him a second-round draft pick, and if you think he still might come to USF, consider what last year's No. 73 pick got as a signing bonus: $441,000. I'm not saying there's not a chance, but ... Think about the current Bulls who were drafted last year -- considerably later -- and still came to USF: Stephen Hunt, Junior Carlin, Derrick Stultz.