Today, finally, Mike London (or Jon Oliver) finalized the overhaul of the football staff. Or appeared to finalize it; four coaches have been let go and four have been added, so that would seem to finish things off. I've been wrong before when I said "done," though, so, yeah. Anyway.
We already covered Jeff Banks, so I won't bother repeating myself. Marques Hagans needs no introduction. Those two, though, while perfectly good additions to the coaching staff (particularly Banks, I think, if mainly because it gives us someone who knows what he's doing on special teams) don't comprise the home run portion of the moves.
First, there's Tom O'Brien, who you'll remember as the one-time head coach at NC State, and before that, Boston College. TOB's official title is associate head coach for the offense and tight ends coach. Jon Tenuta is "associate head coach for the defense/defensive coordinator." This associate stuff is going to be pretty transparent to us, and truthfully I'd guess that TOB will handle more of that associate grunt work stuff than Tenuta will, since he's not also a coordinator.
What I'd love to do is evaluate Tenuta under the cold hard auspices of statistics, but that'd take longer than I've got; cfbstats.com only goes back to 2007 and the truth is that Tenuta's only spent two seasons in that time as an actual defensive coordinator; 2007 was his last year at Georgia Tech, he was never the DC at NC State, and only spent a year with the title at Notre Dame. So it's awfully hard to tell how much of the defense was really his.
Make no mistake, though, he's had his fingerprints on all of them. And Tenuta is one of the best-known defensive names in the business. So well-known that it's rather astounding UVA would land him; it just may have helped that this is his alma mater, and Scott Stadium is where he played his college ball. There probably isn't an assistant coach anywhere that's been involved in more rumors lately than Tenuta. Ohio State, LSU, and Illinois are three schools that were in various stages of hiring Tenuta and ultimately didn't, which has probably added somewhat to his celebrity.
Also adding to his celebrity: blitzes, and lots of them. UVA fans who wanted a "hyper-aggressive" defense have gotten their man. Blitzy blitz blitzes. No more of those drives where the offense runs the exact same wide receiver screen for eight yards a pop like six times in a row because the corners are playing that far off. (Of course, the fans that wanted "hyper-aggressive" lose the right to complain when we blitz a screen pass and it goes for 85 yards. Still.) Tenuta isn't known as much of a recruiter, but his presence is likely to be something of a recruiting chip among defensive players.
O'Brien isn't much of a recruiter either. In fact he's kind of milquetoast; his teams always seemed that way, at any rate. Very even tempered, which is weird for a Marine. But you can tell he knows his football just from the way he always took the 9th-rated recruiting class in the ACC to bowl after bowl after bowl. One wonders what might've happened if he could recruit.
Let's make no mistake, though: recruiting is not this team's problem, and these hires weren't made with recruiting in mind. They were done to shore up the X's and O's. And not even that so much as the mechanics of running a football team. TOB is probably one of the better details men out there, and that is not weird at all for a Marine. (Trust me. Nobody nitpicks like a Marine.) The staff turnover now looks like this:
HC: Mike London ->London
OC: Bill Lazor -> Lazor
DC: Jim Reid -> Jon Tenuta
QB: Bill Lazor -> Lazor
WR: Bill Lazor -> Marques Hagans
RB: Mike Faragalli -> Jeff Banks
TE: Shawn Moore -> Tom O'Brien
OL: Scott Wachenheim -> Wachenheim
DL: Jeff Hanson -> vacant
LB: Vincent Brown -> Brown
CB: Chip West -> West
S: Anthony Poindexter ->; Poindexter
ST: Anthony Poindexter -> Jeff Banks
RC: Jeff Hanson -> Chip West
People in new positions are duly highlighted. Not everything here is as it seems, though. There is no official defensive line coach; London just so happens to have his roots as a DL coach, and will probably take a more active role there, along with graduate assistant Jonathan Lewis, who's going into his second year. TOB didn't get hired just to coach tight ends; he and Wachenheim will probably work hand in hand with both the OL and TEs, as O'Brien has much experience coaching the offensive line in the past. Including right here in Charlottesville. Hagans's actual duties won't change much, except now he's getting paid for real and can go recruit. (Neither, for that matter, do Lazor's.)
(Speaking of recruiting, I wouldn't, by the way, get too focused on trying to pilfer any of NC State's class even though we hired most of the brains of their coaching staff. There isn't much to steal, for one thing, nor much room in our class, for another.)
The upshot in the end is that UVA has done absolutely the best it could do. Anyone wanting more than this is being stupidly unrealistic. Tenuta is one of the top defensive minds in the country. Jim Reid is a very good coach, but he's spent most of his career at the lower levels, below I-A football. Tom O'Brien's credentials are impeccable, and you should expect him to improve the offensive line as well as maybe even fix Mike London's time-management skills. Banks should be a massive upgrade on special teams. We sacrificed some recruiting ability in Reid and Shawn Moore, but Hagans should be able to help bridge that gap, and anyway, London, Poindexter, and West know what they're doing in that regard. If London can't succeed with this group, he can't succeed - and his successor may very well be on the staff now.
Showing posts with label hagans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hagans. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Thursday, November 29, 2012
little shuffle, big shuffle
I picked a good day, yesterday, to leave my Twitter feed running. I don't do that usually, but occasionally do, and stuff kept coming across it and I just couldn't help myself. We'll just consider this morning's Louisville news an extension of a very busy Tuesday, and go from there.
The smaller news was the beginning of the coaching staff shuffle. Running backs coach Mike Faragalli's departure, it's fair to call that unexpected. RB coach is a pretty benign position. It's hard to have a lot of effect, positive or negative, on a team's fortunes. You usually put a recruiter there. Michigan's got this guy who's been there 21 years and survived three separate coaching changes. Mike London portrayed the move as stemming from disappointment in the running game, and if Faragalli was the guy who turned Perry Jones into a dancer when he used to be a lot more decisive, then I can see that. Otherwise I think most of us blamed the O-line for the lack of a run game; that and the occasional bizarre attempt to use Jones as a short-yardage hammer.
After that, I don't know exactly where we go. Marques Hagans probably stays on as Faragalli's replacement, but in what capacity I don't know. He and Shawn Moore will take on some combination of the skill positions, except for quarterback which I would guess is likely to stay with Bill Lazor. I'd like to see Hagans take the receivers off of Lazor's plate so he can focus more on OC duties.
There's still the matter of the O-line, and nothing has been forthcoming from the official camp, but you'd have a hard time finding anyone who thinks Scott Wachenheim's job is secure. I once again register this blog's endorsement of Jim Bollman.
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Now, the news you were waiting for. In more circles than you might guess, people are wondering if the ACC didn't just accidentally become a stronger conference by trading Maryland for Louisville. Certainly it depends on how you look at it. Maryland is a much better school, academical-wise. If you think TV markets are all that matters, we lost out there too, but then again, perhaps not; UVA and VT still provide a presence in the DC market, after all. Louisville has a better football and basketball program than Maryland (and baseball, too, for what that matters), with the caveat that much of their football success will be up in the air if and when Charlie Strong leaves. (That said, Randy Edsall is still employed at Maryland.) Can the marginally better attractiveness of Louisville's athletic programs outweigh the reduced TV presence in a very large market?
At least there's this: The more I think about it, the more I prefer Louisville to the other finalist, UConn. To start with, Louisville isn't coastal, no, but it is southern, the latter of which is just as important to the ACC's traditional identity as the former. It's also more important to the schools that have a lot of weight these days, namely Florida State and Clemson. And let's face it. I don't know if the rumor is true that FSU, Clemson, and maybe others, insisted on Louisville while the Tobacco Road schools (at least initially) wanted Connecticut. But I've read it in enough different and reasonably credible places that I buy it. And it would have been stupidity of epic proportions to continue to northernize the league when the schools you depend on for the league's strength are telling you not to do that.
So I like it about as well as I can muster liking anything in the stupid world of realignment. It does require a little bit of rationalization, of course. I'm under no illusions about what the ACC is doing here, which is to say, dropping a long-held standard, which must have pained a few presidents. Namely, academics. One of the most unfair things I've heard about Louisville is, "But it's a commuter school!" Nonsense; it's not like it's a community college. It does have a commuter aspect to it, and nevertheless has an endowment 98% the size of Maryland's despite being 15,000 students smaller. But yes, it instantly becomes the "worst" academic school in the ACC, and probably not of the quality the ACC would have chosen without its backs against the wall. (However, it's also one of the oldest. Third-oldest, in fact; only Pitt and UNC are older.)
We're pretty much beyond caring about that, though. The ACC can't afford to. It's still in a position of strength, but must maintain a careful balancing act. The next thing the FSUs of the conference might look for is divisional realignment. They didn't want UConn because they didn't want a whole bunch of traveling north, and the football quality wasn't up to snuff. Now they've got the football and they'll probably want less travel. I'm OK with that. UVA should nudge the conference in the direction of realignment as well, otherwise they'll just slot Louisville into Maryland's slot and that'll be our new permanent buddy. Not that I don't want to play Louisville, but I do want to play the traditional ACC teams as often as possible. (And if there's a magical way to do that without being in FSU's division, that'd be sweet too. And a pony. Don't forget the pony.)
Admittedly, now, we are seeing a Big Eastifying of the ACC. Admittedly also, the Big Ten is a money-making dynamo, as is the SEC, and the ACC will not approach that for the foreseeable future. This has a lot of people thinking we should be "proactive" and court Big Ten membership right now, supposedly before the bus leaves or the ship sinks or whatever. Enough rumors flew around this past week that both UVA and UNC had to put out statements categorically denying any kind of interaction with the B1G.
However, our place is the ACC. People assume we should chase the money, too, but we have zero need to do that. UVA sits, financially, near the top of the ACC. We have a head start on our competition that way. In the B1G, with their schools that are three times as big as ours, colossal stadiums, enormous donor bases, we would be up against a lot of schools that can generate a lot of cash much better than we can. We'd be near the bottom of the ladder.
UVA's best course of action is to work their asses off to preserve the ACC. With one extra step: our president, whether that's Teresa Sullivan now or someone else in five or however many years, should be right in the hip pocket of UNC's chancellor, and vice versa. We need to attach ourselves at the hip to UNC. Why? Because UNC and UVA are two of the nation's elite public schools, and closer collaboration with them is something no university president would turn down. The idea that the B1G bus will leave without UVA if we're not next onboard is silly. It's based on the idea that 16 teams is a magic number, above which no conference will ever dare tread.
Ask yourself this: What is the magical gravitational pull toward 16 teams? What force in the universe decrees that a conference must get to 16 teams and stay there? This is entirely a creation of message board imagination; it's a nice round number, people like nice round numbers, and so they imagine themselves a world where that happens. Somehow they imagine for themselves perfect harmony, cohesion, and symmetry in a world (that of NCAA realignment) that couldn't be more chaotic and entropic if it tried. Just as there is no magic force pushing conferences to get to 16 teams, there is no magic force that demands they stay there if they do get there. We live in a world where there are 68 teams in the March Madness tourney, not 64. The MAC seems to exist, somehow, with 13 teams. The B1G had 11 for almost twenty years. The ACC, if left alone, will sit on 15 for quite some time.
Now ask yourself this: Suppose the ACC fell apart in the way that everyone is foreboding for it. FSU and Clemson go to the Big 12, NC State and VT go to the SEC. UVA is left apparently adrift in a sinking conference; in that event, I'd probably have a lot of trouble clinging to the idea that the ACC is still the best place for our school. Reluctantly, B1G membership appears to be the necessary lifeboat. But wait; the "bus has left the station," because the B1G added two more schools in the interim. Now suppose UVA, tied at the hip, as you'll recall, with UNC, knocks on the B1G's door. Do you honestly believe that ACC presidents would say no to the chance to add two elite flagship schools, with a presence in large and growing TV markets, just because they already have 16 teams?
A silly thought. UVA can afford to wait. Or, if not "wait" exactly, it can afford to put its chips in with the success of the ACC. There are too many good schools and good programs in the ACC for it to fail entirely, and UVA is too good a school for university presidents to snub, particularly if UNC is a companion school in whatever potential future changes there are.
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-- So we won at bastyball today. Yay for that! More reaction later, but the very quick cliffnotes are that the poise the team played with, on the road in a tough place to win, was extremely impressive, and of course, you have to like the effect it could have on our tournament hopes. In fact I'll tell you what right now: go 9-9 in the conference, and we're in. Also, I will have highlights tomorrow.
-- Just as I talk about coaching shuffles, here comes more news down the pipeline: Bill Lazor interviewing for the head coaching job at Georgia State. GSU will make the jump to the Sun Belt Conference in the not-too-distant future, so it's not a head-scratching move. If Lazor leaves, Jim Bollman has extensive OC experience. JUST SAYIN
-- News that Malcolm Brogdon will redshirt the season is not exactly exciting, but it does offer some welcome closure to that situation. Losing Brogdon for the year takes away a potential future scoring option, but it settles the rotation some and cements Teven Jones (who looked very veteran-y tonight against Wisconsin) as the backup point guard (or starter until Bub is ready for all the minutes.) The rotation looks as though it's set on nine, with Taylor Barnette the odd man out for now.
-- This article about the gross mismanagement of Maryland's finances is a must-read. NC State fans might want to be worried about having Debbie Yow for an AD, and one must wonder that, even if the Big Ten offers a clean slate, how many of the issues Maryland had - and has - will be fixed so that they don't run themselves right back into debt. And how many might be exacerbated.
The smaller news was the beginning of the coaching staff shuffle. Running backs coach Mike Faragalli's departure, it's fair to call that unexpected. RB coach is a pretty benign position. It's hard to have a lot of effect, positive or negative, on a team's fortunes. You usually put a recruiter there. Michigan's got this guy who's been there 21 years and survived three separate coaching changes. Mike London portrayed the move as stemming from disappointment in the running game, and if Faragalli was the guy who turned Perry Jones into a dancer when he used to be a lot more decisive, then I can see that. Otherwise I think most of us blamed the O-line for the lack of a run game; that and the occasional bizarre attempt to use Jones as a short-yardage hammer.
After that, I don't know exactly where we go. Marques Hagans probably stays on as Faragalli's replacement, but in what capacity I don't know. He and Shawn Moore will take on some combination of the skill positions, except for quarterback which I would guess is likely to stay with Bill Lazor. I'd like to see Hagans take the receivers off of Lazor's plate so he can focus more on OC duties.
There's still the matter of the O-line, and nothing has been forthcoming from the official camp, but you'd have a hard time finding anyone who thinks Scott Wachenheim's job is secure. I once again register this blog's endorsement of Jim Bollman.
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Now, the news you were waiting for. In more circles than you might guess, people are wondering if the ACC didn't just accidentally become a stronger conference by trading Maryland for Louisville. Certainly it depends on how you look at it. Maryland is a much better school, academical-wise. If you think TV markets are all that matters, we lost out there too, but then again, perhaps not; UVA and VT still provide a presence in the DC market, after all. Louisville has a better football and basketball program than Maryland (and baseball, too, for what that matters), with the caveat that much of their football success will be up in the air if and when Charlie Strong leaves. (That said, Randy Edsall is still employed at Maryland.) Can the marginally better attractiveness of Louisville's athletic programs outweigh the reduced TV presence in a very large market?
At least there's this: The more I think about it, the more I prefer Louisville to the other finalist, UConn. To start with, Louisville isn't coastal, no, but it is southern, the latter of which is just as important to the ACC's traditional identity as the former. It's also more important to the schools that have a lot of weight these days, namely Florida State and Clemson. And let's face it. I don't know if the rumor is true that FSU, Clemson, and maybe others, insisted on Louisville while the Tobacco Road schools (at least initially) wanted Connecticut. But I've read it in enough different and reasonably credible places that I buy it. And it would have been stupidity of epic proportions to continue to northernize the league when the schools you depend on for the league's strength are telling you not to do that.
So I like it about as well as I can muster liking anything in the stupid world of realignment. It does require a little bit of rationalization, of course. I'm under no illusions about what the ACC is doing here, which is to say, dropping a long-held standard, which must have pained a few presidents. Namely, academics. One of the most unfair things I've heard about Louisville is, "But it's a commuter school!" Nonsense; it's not like it's a community college. It does have a commuter aspect to it, and nevertheless has an endowment 98% the size of Maryland's despite being 15,000 students smaller. But yes, it instantly becomes the "worst" academic school in the ACC, and probably not of the quality the ACC would have chosen without its backs against the wall. (However, it's also one of the oldest. Third-oldest, in fact; only Pitt and UNC are older.)
We're pretty much beyond caring about that, though. The ACC can't afford to. It's still in a position of strength, but must maintain a careful balancing act. The next thing the FSUs of the conference might look for is divisional realignment. They didn't want UConn because they didn't want a whole bunch of traveling north, and the football quality wasn't up to snuff. Now they've got the football and they'll probably want less travel. I'm OK with that. UVA should nudge the conference in the direction of realignment as well, otherwise they'll just slot Louisville into Maryland's slot and that'll be our new permanent buddy. Not that I don't want to play Louisville, but I do want to play the traditional ACC teams as often as possible. (And if there's a magical way to do that without being in FSU's division, that'd be sweet too. And a pony. Don't forget the pony.)
Admittedly, now, we are seeing a Big Eastifying of the ACC. Admittedly also, the Big Ten is a money-making dynamo, as is the SEC, and the ACC will not approach that for the foreseeable future. This has a lot of people thinking we should be "proactive" and court Big Ten membership right now, supposedly before the bus leaves or the ship sinks or whatever. Enough rumors flew around this past week that both UVA and UNC had to put out statements categorically denying any kind of interaction with the B1G.
However, our place is the ACC. People assume we should chase the money, too, but we have zero need to do that. UVA sits, financially, near the top of the ACC. We have a head start on our competition that way. In the B1G, with their schools that are three times as big as ours, colossal stadiums, enormous donor bases, we would be up against a lot of schools that can generate a lot of cash much better than we can. We'd be near the bottom of the ladder.
UVA's best course of action is to work their asses off to preserve the ACC. With one extra step: our president, whether that's Teresa Sullivan now or someone else in five or however many years, should be right in the hip pocket of UNC's chancellor, and vice versa. We need to attach ourselves at the hip to UNC. Why? Because UNC and UVA are two of the nation's elite public schools, and closer collaboration with them is something no university president would turn down. The idea that the B1G bus will leave without UVA if we're not next onboard is silly. It's based on the idea that 16 teams is a magic number, above which no conference will ever dare tread.
Ask yourself this: What is the magical gravitational pull toward 16 teams? What force in the universe decrees that a conference must get to 16 teams and stay there? This is entirely a creation of message board imagination; it's a nice round number, people like nice round numbers, and so they imagine themselves a world where that happens. Somehow they imagine for themselves perfect harmony, cohesion, and symmetry in a world (that of NCAA realignment) that couldn't be more chaotic and entropic if it tried. Just as there is no magic force pushing conferences to get to 16 teams, there is no magic force that demands they stay there if they do get there. We live in a world where there are 68 teams in the March Madness tourney, not 64. The MAC seems to exist, somehow, with 13 teams. The B1G had 11 for almost twenty years. The ACC, if left alone, will sit on 15 for quite some time.
Now ask yourself this: Suppose the ACC fell apart in the way that everyone is foreboding for it. FSU and Clemson go to the Big 12, NC State and VT go to the SEC. UVA is left apparently adrift in a sinking conference; in that event, I'd probably have a lot of trouble clinging to the idea that the ACC is still the best place for our school. Reluctantly, B1G membership appears to be the necessary lifeboat. But wait; the "bus has left the station," because the B1G added two more schools in the interim. Now suppose UVA, tied at the hip, as you'll recall, with UNC, knocks on the B1G's door. Do you honestly believe that ACC presidents would say no to the chance to add two elite flagship schools, with a presence in large and growing TV markets, just because they already have 16 teams?
A silly thought. UVA can afford to wait. Or, if not "wait" exactly, it can afford to put its chips in with the success of the ACC. There are too many good schools and good programs in the ACC for it to fail entirely, and UVA is too good a school for university presidents to snub, particularly if UNC is a companion school in whatever potential future changes there are.
********************************************************
-- So we won at bastyball today. Yay for that! More reaction later, but the very quick cliffnotes are that the poise the team played with, on the road in a tough place to win, was extremely impressive, and of course, you have to like the effect it could have on our tournament hopes. In fact I'll tell you what right now: go 9-9 in the conference, and we're in. Also, I will have highlights tomorrow.
-- Just as I talk about coaching shuffles, here comes more news down the pipeline: Bill Lazor interviewing for the head coaching job at Georgia State. GSU will make the jump to the Sun Belt Conference in the not-too-distant future, so it's not a head-scratching move. If Lazor leaves, Jim Bollman has extensive OC experience. JUST SAYIN
-- News that Malcolm Brogdon will redshirt the season is not exactly exciting, but it does offer some welcome closure to that situation. Losing Brogdon for the year takes away a potential future scoring option, but it settles the rotation some and cements Teven Jones (who looked very veteran-y tonight against Wisconsin) as the backup point guard (or starter until Bub is ready for all the minutes.) The rotation looks as though it's set on nine, with Taylor Barnette the odd man out for now.
-- This article about the gross mismanagement of Maryland's finances is a must-read. NC State fans might want to be worried about having Debbie Yow for an AD, and one must wonder that, even if the Big Ten offers a clean slate, how many of the issues Maryland had - and has - will be fixed so that they don't run themselves right back into debt. And how many might be exacerbated.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
thursday linkpile
First, programming note. Or programming essay, if you will. Your humble blogger goes on summer break starting tomorrow, which lasts until Wednesday-ish. There may be a little something in the interim, but we'll see. It depends. Once I get back, it'll just about be time to jump with both feet into football mode. Starting the last week of July and going til I'm done, we get to the season previews. There are 17 in all: 11 ACC teams, 4 non-conference games on our schedule, and lastly our offense and defense. Recruit profiles will be sprinkled in there too.
If you've followed football season on these pages before, you know there's a little bit of a weekly routine. If you haven't, then here it is:
Sunday: This blog participates in the Blogpoll, the more or less official blogger's version of the weekly coaches' and AP rankings. And much better, because we don't pawn off our ballots on whichever unlucky gofer walked past the office first, it's the very model of transparency, you the reader get a say, and besides we're just smarter, faster, and better looking than your average media dork. Anyway, Sunday is when the first draft of the ballot goes up, and generally you also get my reactions to whatever travesty just took place the day before, and if we won, I try to have highlights up too.
Monday: Update the recruiting board, check in on how our commits did that weekend, and catch up on non-football stuff.
Tuesday-Wednesday: Whatever is going on, plus usually there's some kind of roundtable going on between us bloggers. Those are fun because other bloggers put on their twisted-mind hats to ask stuff and I have to figure out how to answer questions like, "if your football team was a bird, what species would it be?" This is also soccer season, so I try and figure out how to react to the games without getting to see them, because the sport is totally ignored by the networks.
Thursday: Game preview day! Ohboyohboy it's almost Saturday....
Friday-Saturday: The blog's weekend. Nothing posted unless something big happens.
So. Stuff is going on, and as you're aware, I have opinions:
- Watford. This is a big deal, because while we go head-to-head all the time with VT for recruits, it doesn't actually happen that often in the quarterback realm. It hasn't turned out well when we do. VT's been on Watford all this time - don't you believe it for a minute when Hokies claim they didn't want him that badly - so getting him is a coup. However, don't for a minute read anything into it beyond Watford himself. If you think it's a foot in the door at Hampton, from which we haven't signed a recruit for almost ten years, ask yourself if that last recruit (Marques Hagans) was a foot in the door for a new coaching staff.
I don't think it'll happen, but you'll know something really special is going on if Lafonte Thourogood decides on UVA too. Watford dropped for us several days ago now; if it was as simple as Thourogood just wanting somewhere to play quarterback without competition, he'd have committed to Tech by now, or at least will do so in the next couple days.
- UNC. Uh-oh. The NCAA's puttin' on the investigating pants again. They weren't very nice to USC just now, and now they've decided to see what Butch Davis is up to.
- Soccer schedule. Came out during the World Cup, which is kind of a good way to make sure the attentions of your soccer fans are elsewhere. If you don't count exhibitions, and I don't, there isn't a single road game on there save a few ACC games. And all the really good teams - Maryland, Wake, UNC -are at home. Klockner will be a busy place this fall.
- Soccer recruiting. Now for the bad news: our top recruit won't be coming. Parker Walsh has decided to start his pro career overseas instead of going the college route. Walsh has some U-17 and U-20 national team experience under his belt, our only recruit to do so. Sort of thing you have to worry about in sports like baseball and soccer. Especially soccer: if you're going to make a serious career out of it, the NCAA doesn't make much sense if you can get a chance with the bigger guys in Europe.
- The First Four. Dippy name for a goofy concept. I hardly even need to say anything when Jay Bilas basically said everything for me. I haven't agreed that much with anything on ESPN since they called Michael Vick a felon. I get why the NCAA insists on not calling them "play-in games" - it's because of idiot senators and attorneys general with itchy lawsuit trigger fingers, ready to go to court on behalf of West Northsouthern State that won the Corn Valley Conference and still "didn't get to play in the tournament" because of the "oligarchy" the NCAA runs. They're still play-in games, especially with the at-larges involved, playing for a middle seed. They wouldn't have to be called The First Four (TM) if they hadn't caved to dumb sentiment and just made the would-be 16-seeds play each other. Correctly promoted, that would actually be a really interesting day of basketball.
Anyway, this is the very last time you'll ever see "The First Four" referred to on these pages. They're play-in games. Literally, that's what they are. That's what people wanted, that's what the NCAA gave them, and that's what they're all getting called.
- TV deal. As we all figured, the ACC will be able to hand out about $13 million to each of its schools. Lots of people have opinions on this; mine is that it's a conference-saving deal. I think this, plus the conference's academic reputation, is good enough to prevent poachers - the SEC, mainly - from grabbing a team. Remember two things: 1, it's not about the money, it's about the competition and how you're doing relative to them, and 2, the presidents, not the ADs, make the call.
We take a lot less of a summer break around here than school does, so don't get too comfy. Back sooner than you think with football, football, football.
If you've followed football season on these pages before, you know there's a little bit of a weekly routine. If you haven't, then here it is:
Sunday: This blog participates in the Blogpoll, the more or less official blogger's version of the weekly coaches' and AP rankings. And much better, because we don't pawn off our ballots on whichever unlucky gofer walked past the office first, it's the very model of transparency, you the reader get a say, and besides we're just smarter, faster, and better looking than your average media dork. Anyway, Sunday is when the first draft of the ballot goes up, and generally you also get my reactions to whatever travesty just took place the day before, and if we won, I try to have highlights up too.
Monday: Update the recruiting board, check in on how our commits did that weekend, and catch up on non-football stuff.
Tuesday-Wednesday: Whatever is going on, plus usually there's some kind of roundtable going on between us bloggers. Those are fun because other bloggers put on their twisted-mind hats to ask stuff and I have to figure out how to answer questions like, "if your football team was a bird, what species would it be?" This is also soccer season, so I try and figure out how to react to the games without getting to see them, because the sport is totally ignored by the networks.
Thursday: Game preview day! Ohboyohboy it's almost Saturday....
Friday-Saturday: The blog's weekend. Nothing posted unless something big happens.
So. Stuff is going on, and as you're aware, I have opinions:
- Watford. This is a big deal, because while we go head-to-head all the time with VT for recruits, it doesn't actually happen that often in the quarterback realm. It hasn't turned out well when we do. VT's been on Watford all this time - don't you believe it for a minute when Hokies claim they didn't want him that badly - so getting him is a coup. However, don't for a minute read anything into it beyond Watford himself. If you think it's a foot in the door at Hampton, from which we haven't signed a recruit for almost ten years, ask yourself if that last recruit (Marques Hagans) was a foot in the door for a new coaching staff.
I don't think it'll happen, but you'll know something really special is going on if Lafonte Thourogood decides on UVA too. Watford dropped for us several days ago now; if it was as simple as Thourogood just wanting somewhere to play quarterback without competition, he'd have committed to Tech by now, or at least will do so in the next couple days.
- UNC. Uh-oh. The NCAA's puttin' on the investigating pants again. They weren't very nice to USC just now, and now they've decided to see what Butch Davis is up to.
- Soccer schedule. Came out during the World Cup, which is kind of a good way to make sure the attentions of your soccer fans are elsewhere. If you don't count exhibitions, and I don't, there isn't a single road game on there save a few ACC games. And all the really good teams - Maryland, Wake, UNC -are at home. Klockner will be a busy place this fall.
- Soccer recruiting. Now for the bad news: our top recruit won't be coming. Parker Walsh has decided to start his pro career overseas instead of going the college route. Walsh has some U-17 and U-20 national team experience under his belt, our only recruit to do so. Sort of thing you have to worry about in sports like baseball and soccer. Especially soccer: if you're going to make a serious career out of it, the NCAA doesn't make much sense if you can get a chance with the bigger guys in Europe.
- The First Four. Dippy name for a goofy concept. I hardly even need to say anything when Jay Bilas basically said everything for me. I haven't agreed that much with anything on ESPN since they called Michael Vick a felon. I get why the NCAA insists on not calling them "play-in games" - it's because of idiot senators and attorneys general with itchy lawsuit trigger fingers, ready to go to court on behalf of West Northsouthern State that won the Corn Valley Conference and still "didn't get to play in the tournament" because of the "oligarchy" the NCAA runs. They're still play-in games, especially with the at-larges involved, playing for a middle seed. They wouldn't have to be called The First Four (TM) if they hadn't caved to dumb sentiment and just made the would-be 16-seeds play each other. Correctly promoted, that would actually be a really interesting day of basketball.
Anyway, this is the very last time you'll ever see "The First Four" referred to on these pages. They're play-in games. Literally, that's what they are. That's what people wanted, that's what the NCAA gave them, and that's what they're all getting called.
- TV deal. As we all figured, the ACC will be able to hand out about $13 million to each of its schools. Lots of people have opinions on this; mine is that it's a conference-saving deal. I think this, plus the conference's academic reputation, is good enough to prevent poachers - the SEC, mainly - from grabbing a team. Remember two things: 1, it's not about the money, it's about the competition and how you're doing relative to them, and 2, the presidents, not the ADs, make the call.
We take a lot less of a summer break around here than school does, so don't get too comfy. Back sooner than you think with football, football, football.
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