Earlier on Tuesday, Prep Rally and other sources like USA Today followed up on reports from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other sources which claimed that high school senior and uber-recruit Reuben Foster and his mother were meeting with NCAA officials to discuss his transfer from LaGrange (Ga.) Troup High to Auburn (Ala.) High, a move which preceded Foster's switch of college commitment from Alabama to archrival Auburn.

Troup linebacker Reuben Foster — Rivals.com

Now, Rivals.com and other sources are confirming that Foster never met with NCAA officials at all. Rather, he and his mother, Anita Paige, spoke to officials from the Alabama High School Athletic Association, which was investigating his eligibility to play for Auburn High, not Auburn University.

It seems the mass confusion about exactly who was investigating Foster for what was due to quotes given to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Michael Carvell by Paige herself. Carvell was offered up the following quote by Paige, which he interpreted to mean that the family was being looked at by NCAA officials.

"They (the NCAA) are talking with Reuben and me. They want to make sure there was nothing illegal done to get us down here, or anything like that. They want to make sure there wasn't a college booster involved."

Carvell insists that Paige specifically said that it was the NCAA which was investigating the family. Yet when he tried to confirm that later on Monday evening, Paige refused to return any calls seeking comment. There was additional reason for Carvell to believe that the NCAA might have been looking at Foster's recruitment, with two current Auburn freshmen recruits facing additional scrutiny in the past week alone.

Reuben Foster, a senior linebacker at Auburn (Ala.) High, is one of the top two football recruits in the country. When he recently shifted his verbal commitment from Alabama to archrival Auburn, it was considered as much a fair accompli as it was a shocking coup for the Tigers, a move that seemed in the works ever since Foster left his LaGrange (Ga.) Troup High home for Auburn in the first place.

Auburn linebacker Reuben Foster — Rivals.com

Now the NCAA seems to have developed a similar level of skepticism, leading to a formal interview with Foster and his mother, Anita Paige. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which first confirmed the NCAA meeting, the collegiate sports body is concerned about the possible involvement of a booster in Foster's collegiate switch.

Meanwhile, Paige is so adamant that nothing improper begat her son's change of heart that she has said the entire family -- primarily herself and Foster's younger sister, with other extended relatives possible -- are planning to get Auburn tattoos to match the wild ink Foster had put on his own arm after his commitment to the Tigers.

For her part, Paige said there was much more to Foster's decision to change his future destination than simple cultural and competitive matters. Strikingly, the shocking loss of a cousin who played at Auburn may have helped push the senior toward the Tigers.

Deion Sanders has always been among the most braggadocious members of the football family, whether as a player or media member. Still, even he might have outdone himself when deciding on the mascot of the football team for his new Prime Prep Academy squad.

NFL Hall of Famer and coach of Prime Prep Academy Deion Sanders — Getty

When asked about the school's mascot during an interview on Dallas radio station KTCK-AM, Sanders gave a succinct response to the query: Prime Prep's new mascot would be "winning."

That's right: From here out, there will be a Texas high school football team know as the Prime Prep Academy Winning. Somewhere Charlie Sheen is smiling.

[Y! TV: Miley Cyrus to join 'Two and a Half Men' next season]

Here is the full context of Sanders' mascot claim, as relayed by the Dallas Morning News:

"Our mascot is winning … we don't care about mascots…Our kids are going to look good and preferably they're going to perform good. But the best thing about it is they're going to be educated."

That quote should be on a (very long) bumper sticker somewhere. Naturally, Neon Deion would guarantee that his students would look good, too. Only fitting for one of the most stylish football players of the past 20 years.

Sanders offered up plenty of other positive sound bites about Prime Prep's opening, and the football program, which he is scheduled to lead alongside a pair of former Cowboys teammates.

A Florida color guard coach was fired after it was revealed that he sent nude photos of himself to a male student. That act in itself is more than a fireable offense, but it was made more startling by his family's recent history with photo messages: His brother had been fired from a position at the same school for the exact same reason, except he sent nude photos to a female student.

Oviedo color guard coach Jason Ciesla — ABC News/WFTV screenshot

The pair of sordid incidents occurred at Oviedo (Fla.) High, where Jason Ciesla served as the school's color guard coach. Ciesla's contract was officially terminated on Wednesday after a police investigation verified allegations that the 24-year-old coach sent nude photos of himself directly to a male student.

According to the police investigation and reporting from Orlando ABC affiliate WFTV, the coach was holding an on-and-off relationship with a high school student, with whom he exchanged nude photos via text message. Ciesla also reportedly invited boys from the school over to the neighborhood pool near his house.

There has been no indication as to whether Ciesla will be charged with a crime related to his nude texts. If he's as lucky as his brother, he won't, though that in itself will provide small comfort to the family of athletes to which he sent the explicit texts.

Are you ready for some football? If you're living in Alaska or Hawaii, you've already got some, and there is plenty more on the way. Ready or not, the 2012 prep football season has begun.

The defending champion Anchoridge (Ala.) Service High football team were back in action on Saturday — OC16.TV

Across the country, prep football programs are getting summer training camps for the forthcoming fall football season under way in earnest, working out with two-a-days and, in many cases, engaging in full contact drills.

Yet Alaska and Hawaii are far beyond that. The entire slate of high school football teams in the nation's farthest Western states got underway on Friday and Saturday, with a handful of key games taking place during the season's first week.

That's astonishing, considering the fact that most schools are just getting going, with many donning full pads and helmets for the first time while their contemporaries in Alaska and Hawaii were kicking off in full-fledged games that actually count on the 2012 season record.

The move to start Alaskan football so early makes sense because of the state's arctic weather. With a season that starts in early August, Alaskan football can declare a state champion before November, when it gets so cold that playing a full football game could come with a significant risk of frostbite. As currently constituted, the Alaskan regular season ends the first week of October, with the playoffs wrapping up before Halloween.

Hawaii has also kicked off the season in mid-August in recent years, and 2012 was no exception, with the likes of Kealakehe (Hi.) High and Kailua (Hi.) High facing off on Friday night.

Across the past few years, two health issues have cast a significant shadow over the prep football landscape: Heat-related deaths and escalating concussion numbers. Across the nation, a number of states have implemented programs aiming to address both issues, but some schools have stepped in to provide some common sense measures of their own.

Case in point: The Orange (Calif.) Lutheran High football team, which is using caps on top of the team's helmets to reduce the force of impact, hopefully helping to decrease concussions therein.

As you can see in the video above, the Orange football team has been using the soft caps made of gel. The practice was first noted by Los Angeles Times high school writer Eric Sondheimer and was captured in the video you see above.

The practice caps, which were donated by their maker (a company called Guardian), allow a full 100 players to pad their helmets and minimize the force of impact. They will only be used in practice for now, but some data has suggested as many as 90 percent of teenage football concussions occur in practice, making the gel caps a sizable step in the right preventative direction.

There are no measures to prove the helmet caps have been effective, but Orange Lutheran officials insist that any chance of decreasing the odds of concussions is a step in the right direction well worth taking.

"What we can try and do as a medical staff here at Orange Lutheran is reduce the amount of concussions," Orange Lutheran head athletic trainer Ryan Lisk said. "Obviously there's no way of telling if you in fact prevented a concussion, but what we're hoping is that we see the numbers from the past few years drop by using extra precautions."

When it comes to youth sports, the Little League World Series serves as the absolute pinnacle of pre-teen accomplishment. It pulls in the best youth baseball all-star teams from across the world. It's televised on ESPN and, in general, it showcases that youngsters can do much of what their heroes do on a smaller scale, both in terms of their bodies and the fields on which they play.

Yet one team which will play in Williamsport, Penn. this week got there in the most controversial of circumstances, officially ending its opponents late upset bid by appealing to third base that a base runner had missed the bag. The referee concurred with the appeal and ended the game, and fans from Petaluma, Calif. rejoiced, leaving a squad from Hawaii with a despondent flight back to the Pacific Island.

The entire scene unfolded in the top of the sixth inning, with the Petaluma (Calif.) National Little League All-Stars clinging to a 7-6 lead against the Nanakuli (Hawaii) Little League All-Stars. There were two outs in the inning with a runner on second base, but before the next pitch was fired, the Petaluma manager walked out to the mound, in theory to discuss pitch selection and how to approach the next Hawaii batter.

Instead, the manager was told by his third baseman, Porter Slate, that the previous runner had missed third base while rounding the bags. The manager told his pitcher to fire the ball to third base, with the assumption that Braedyn Chong, the final scoring Hawaii runner had indeed missed the bag.

Nanakuli Little League's Braedyn Chong rounds third base — ESPN screenshot

The call from the side officially ended the contest, sending the Petaluma players into a glove-throwing celebration and trip back home to pack for a trip to Pennsylvania less than 24 hours later.

"I saw him not touch the base," Slate told the San Bernadino Sun. "I was disappointed they scored, but then I remembered he didn't touch the base."

Meanwhile, the Hawaiian players were left scratching their heads, with their manager less than convinced that any of his charges had done anything wrong, as he was quick to tell the San Bernadino Sun following the loss.

A drought throughout Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle set the stage for dramatic droughts that led to wildfires which have scorched much of the Sooner state. As it happens, those fires have coincided with the start of football practice for high schools across the state, leaving school football programs caught between preparing for the forthcoming season and scrambling to live life as they know it.

That dichotomy was never more evident than at Luther (Okla.) High, where the Luther Lions opened practice on fields that were literally charred by the fast-spreading wildfires.

As Luther coaches and players told the Oklahoman, a return to the football field was a return to normal, providing a reprieve from the day-in, day-out trauma that has come with the wildfires across the state.

"With school being back in on Thursday, and football getting going, we'll get back to normal again," first-year Luther head coach Shawn Meek said. "I think the identity of any small town is the school. That's what they have their pride in.

"In order to recover from something like this, people have to get back to normal, get back to consistency, get back to something being regular. To small towns in August, that's school and football."

As the Oklahoman made clear, even if football practice provided a mental escape from the fires, there was no escaping the impact of the natural disaster. Trees within 20 yards of the edge of the field -- easily within distance of an overthrow from a passing drill -- stood like matchsticks, torched by the passing fires. The edges of the field on which the team practiced itself were blackened, as if someone had held an impromptu barbecue and left the residue all over the grass.

Meanwhile, when players aren't practicing, they're trying to help their neighbors get back to normal. Luther quarterback Austin Weathers told the Oklahoman that he and his teammates were working at the town's donation center in the off hours in the days before school opened on Thursday.