Tuesday Hub Pleads the Fifth

• Warren Denied! A faculty panel at Florida State shot down tight end Brandon Warren's request out of his FSU commitment to transfer home to Tennessee to be near his ill mother, saying his case "does not rise to the level of objective evidence that proves the student-athlete's extraordinary personal hardship." If Warren insists on leaving FSU - where he's still technically on scholarship, but hasn't been in school since February - for the Vols, or any other other school in the Bowl Subdivision, he'll have to sit out this fall and pay his own way through the 2007-08 school year. You're a cold one, Florida State.

• Go to Junior College, Young Man: The NCAA passed legislation last week continuing its assault on prep diploma mills designed to keep players eligible with minimum requirements. The legislation will cut off a loophole that allowed players to take a fifth year without graduating to get GPAs up to snuff.

Basketball coaches are primarily opposed, because prep schools are primarily geared towards basketball, though the New York Times has reported football players have taken advantage of diploma mills, too. The Times has John Calipari, who worries about "blow[ing] the whole thing up with a bazooka," and Georgia Tech's Paul Hewitt, who said, "We're slowly but surely taking away the opportunity to overcome a bad start." A prep school basketball coach in Connecticut said the practice of "reclassifying" a student for a fifth year is common and predicted "a flood of lawsuits."

Winners: junior colleges. Instead of a fifth year of prep school, athletes are more likely to go the two-year route.

• Hard Times at FIU! Florida International not only failed to win a single game in 2007, not only became known primarily for a bench-clearing brawl with crosstown overlord Miami, not only fielded a team already below the Association's 85-man roster limit, but now will face scholarship losses for "substandard graduation rates." The first round of "proactive" attrition was in January, when FIU nixed six scholarships. Overall, the Panthers are expected to lose nine scholarships in football and a dozen overall, according to the Miami Herald. They should lose another because only two players on last year's roster even hail from outside the state of Florida, much less "international."

FIU athletic director Pete Garcia has experience patching "compliance issues": he was the AD down the road at Miami in 1995, where he oversaw the loss of 33 scholarships across several sports.

• Quickly: A Kansas State fan who spent a month in a coma and was given "almost no chance of survival" after being struck by an overpass while riding on top of a KSU fan bus en route to the KSU-Kansas game in November thanks his supporters ... Marriage, graduation, draft: a big weekend for Andrew Wellock ... College football is year-round, and this is a problem, Dennis Dodd? ... Florida State freshman Kevin McNeil has dealt with death, and he's not worried about a little car accident ... Earl Everett became the 18th player from Florida's championship team on an NFL roster in the past three days ... Frank and Rhonda Landry take a bow in the Times-Picayune ... Speaking of LSU, the Tigers matched the entire Big 12 for first round picks Saturday ... Count Ole Miss' Rory Johnson among spurned draftees hurt by the NFL's character crackdown ... Steve Spurrier's delightfully half-assed Under Armour commercial? Part of the company's nearly $11 million deal to outfit the Gamecocks. New uniforms include all the trademark Under Armour piping and shoulder pad clutter ... Donnie Webb reaches into the Post-Standard archives to memorialize fallen Orangeman Kevin Mitchell ... Mitch Albom is still not sure what to make of Drew Stanton ... Lucky for Tennessee's Ryan West, the NFL needs long snappers, too ... Brandon Jackson is vindicated ... No summer vacation for Oregon State ... Matt Leinart dropped his agent - over jealousy of Reggie Bush?

On that note, play us to the "Rap Sheet," guys...

The Rap Sheet
Crimes, misdemeanors and eligibility-crippling issues legal, academic, institutional and otherwise.
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Subpoenaed, thirteen Penn State football players, among the 37 people expected to be called to testify in the trial of the six Lion players charged last week with 15 felony and 18 misdemeanor counts of assault, burglary, trespassing and harassment at an apartment fight. Lawyer of Anthony Scirrotto, the safety who  faces the strongest charges for allegedly started the brawl by calling teammates to respond to an incident involving his girlfriend: "He did nothing of the sort."

Here is the full list of subpoenas, including PSU starters Knowledge Timmons, Dan Connor and Deon Butler.

Implicated, two Michigan football players in a drug-related traffic stop last week, according to the Monroe News. No arrests, no names until charges are filed pending some lab results, but "sources" told the Times the car contained some pot and legal Vicodin. The news from MGoBlog's "sources" terrifies him: Mario Manningham?

Pled, not guilty, ex-Michigan State (and, briefly, New Orleans Saint) defensive end Hubert Thompson, who is accused of murder by throwing a 66-year-old neighbor off a balcony in their building in Illinois on March 30. USA Today says his mother said Thompson had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but had gone off medication because it made him feel "listless and dizzy"; his attorney says "fitness is going to be an issue." Thompson's in jail on $3 million bond.