Welcome to Husker Heartbeat - a sampling of links and quick wit to start your morning! Keep checking each morning, Monday-Friday, for new links! We look for the offbeat as well as the straightforward - so don’t just think of us as a typical link farm!

A quick abbreviation key FYI: OWH=Omaha World-Herald, LJS=Lincoln Journal-Star, CN=Corn Nation, BRN=Big Red Network, HI=Huskers Illustrated, BRR=Big Red Report. If we need to add more - we will. Others, like ESPN, are self-explanatory.

Cool? Cool!

*We start with a national story…keep your eyes on this: The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into college athletic programs that skirt NCAA rules on scholarship limits by oversigning recruiting classes, then booting existing players. The worst offenders can be found here.

*And here’s another: The IRS is auditing 30 college athletic departments to determine how salaries were arrived at.

Why does this matter? Because, as the story says: “The report, issued this month, was the IRS' interim look at its Colleges and Universities Compliance Project, which the agency said was part of a larger effort to review the largest, most complex organizations in the tax-exempt sector.”

Translation: The IRS is sniffing around to see if these organizations should truly be tax-exempt.

And, folks, if athletic departments aren’t allowed to be tax-exempt - and we don’t think they should be - everything, and we mean everything, will change about collegiate athletics.

*SI’s Andy Staples asks an obvious question: Why do the ACC and Big East get auto BCS bids when Mountain West champs outdraw them for bowl followings and TV ratings?

*Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas headlines NU’s Leadership 101 conference.

*For now, we’ll begin to indulge the copy coming out of Husker Hype, which discusses the future of Nebraska’s offense. We need to see more from this bunch, though.

*BRN talks Special Teams.

*Husker high jumper Audrey Svane looks to recapture the magic she had in February.

*A Nebraska freshman, Ari Romero, tries out for Mexico’s national team.

*If you missed Lee B’s weekly OWH chat, here it is.

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