Chase Harler, Maciej Bender & Sagaba Konate are enrolled & started summer school today. Check out the updated roster https://t.co/jAbGDIna1K
— WVU Men's Basketball (@WVUhoops) June 6, 2016
That takes care of West Virginia’s incoming recruiting class for basketball, but what about the three-sided football?
It’s getting there.
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We’re on to the Elite Eight of the Top Team of All-Time. Cast your vote today! #WVU125
➡ https://t.co/vgK6tkCjKg pic.twitter.com/4pl7mF5X3N
— WVU Football (@WVUfootball) June 6, 2016
WVU football’s Twitter account has been heavily promoting the team’s ambitious celebration of 125 years of Mountaineers football with links to not only stories but time capsule stuff that entertains and amuses. Today, though, is the day the vote for the greatest team of all time reaches the Elite Eight.
But while we’re here … worst team ever? I’ll listen to your answers off the air.
Thursday Oct. 13 Gold-Blue Debut WheelingSaturday Oct. 29 WVU Tech (exhibition) BeckleyFriday Nov. 11 Mount St. Mary’s MorgantownMonday Nov. 14 Mississippi Valley State MorgantownFriday Nov. 18 NIT Season Tip-Off MorgantownThursday Nov. 24 NIT Season Tip-Off ^ Brooklyn, N.Y.Friday Nov. 25 NIT Season Tip-Off ^ Brooklyn, N.Y.Monday Nov. 28 NIT Season Tip-Off MorgantownSaturday Dec. 3 at Virginia Charlottesville, Va.Wednesday Dec. 7 Western Carolina CharlestonSaturday Dec. 10 VMI MorgantownSaturday Dec. 17 UMKC MorgantownTuesday Dec. 20 Radford MorgantownFriday Dec. 23 Northern Kentucky Morgantown
Saturday Jan. 28 Texas A&M # Morgantown
A year ago, West Virginia’s non-conference home schedule lacked a game against a Power 5 opponent for the first time since the 2008-09 season. (Yet the average home attendance was 10,583, the highest since the Final Four season and the third-best number is nine seasons with Bob Huggins.)
The above is WVU’s non-conference schedule for 2016-17 and, welp, it’s not great, but you’ll see some wins at the Coliseum!
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#Big12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby on revenue distribution & vote to implement a #Big12FB championship game. https://t.co/ZZU22hZxNt
— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) June 3, 2016
Amazingly, Bob Bowlsby leads with the money, which as always trumps all else. But the conference title game is big. And I assure you that is not unanimous among coaches. It might actually be 0-7 among coaches, but the coaches don’t matter.
We can also probably get used to the idea of two five-team divisions, even though coaches cherish the round robin schedule, because, again, the coaches don’t matter. Divisions put division winners in the title game, but they do not guarantee the top two teams, and the point of the title game is to give its two best teams an extra data point for the CFP.
Additionally, the Big 12 asked the data people to develop and deliver more data, which is a pretty sure sign what was shared was not particularly moving. Weird activities, but at least these are activities.
Welcome to the Friday Feedback, pretty good at what it does, flanked by loyal compatriots but out of the game for a little bit. You could also call it the second choice to coach Baylor this season.
In reality, there was just a small pool of candidates to coach the Bears, and figure those in that pool would probably be wary. Mack Brown wasn’t going to be the hire, because there’s a chance he’d want to be the full-time guy or that others might. It absolutely could not have been defensive coordinator Phil Bennett. Nobody — Dino Babers, Phil Montgomery, etc. — was going to leave a full-time head coaching job in late May and go to Baylor, where no one knows what’s yet unwritten.
So in Jim Grobe the Bears get an excellent hand, a steady and steadying personality who is quite liked by his peers. His first coaching staff at Ohio University wasn’t much unlike his final staff at Wake Forest. People left, but it was rare, and it was always for a better opportunity. People weren’t in a rush to leave Grobe’s side, because he was a good man and a good coach, and that industry isn’t replete with one or the other, never mind both.
In a public relations sense, this is a shrewd move for Baylor, which desperately needs empathizers even as it refuses to let recruits out of letters of intent. People are not going to, and ought not, root for Baylor right now, though a lot of the bad seeds are gone, but the players free of guilt? They are now cast as characters in need of fans and friends, and Grobe is the sort of guy who brings people to that side of the crowd. You might root for the plucky coach who’s clearly doing this as a selfless one-year deal to help who he can help, and you might hope the kids get something better than what’s likely coming their way.
In a football sense, this is harsh. Grobe is a 2016 option, and he’s not a needle-mover the school has to hire in 2017 to again deploy the massive momentum Baylor had going before all of this. But how many players know that? Probably all of them, and most of them know they’re going to be on the team in 2017 and Grobe will not. For a program losing recruits now and sure to find difficulty attracting players during this round of recruiting, that’s dangerous. Players — kids — can push limits and test boundaries, tune out messages and speakers and wait for the calendar to turn, and, honestly, there’s probably not much Grobe can do about that because he has to restore install a culture there that must last far beyond his days, however long or brief they are.
Also, are we sure Grobe was/is good? I know, I know … Wake Forest won an ACC title! (Remarkably, Wake was 6-0 on the road that season.) But, man, that was a weak ACC, the Demon Deacons were 2-3 and outscored 98-66 against ranked teams and the ACC title game remains one of the top exhibits for those who do not like title games. (It also set up WVU v. Georgia Tech in that season’s Gator Bowl.)
Grobe then followed that special 11-3 season with 9-4 and 8-5 records and then five straight losing seasons at a combined 12 games below .500 in ACC play.
Now, out of coaching for two seasons, he’s in charge of what had been one of the country’s top ascending programs. This is a different cat and a different hat, and there’s, like, no precedent to suggest this will work. But Baylor might not be interested in wins and losses as much as direction, and that in itself might be a victory for a place that’s proved it will not be defined or damned by football.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, be careful how you make your point.
Mr Burns said:
Is he saying that eight and pho should be the yearly expectation? That’s mediocrity. They need to challenge for a title here and there.
Are we making pho puns now? I’m all for that. (I resisted the urge there, on principle.)
Mack said:
It will be interesting to see if Baylor does the “hire a ‘good guy’ for a couple of years to get everyone off our back, then fire him and hire the winner.” That’s usually the tactic teams use in college football.
To his credit, Mackstrodamus said this before Grobe was hired. We owe him that.
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I said I’d be back, and here I am. Another wedding weekend is upon us, but I’m not leaving until Saturday for that one, so I’ll be here and we’ll F Double tomorrow as a token of my appreciation.
I’ve scanned through the comments — it’s where and how I learned Baylor hired Jim Grobe, which is a fairly amazing move — and there’s plenty to unpack, so that’ll be fun.
Yesterday was the first day of the Big 12 meetings, and it was not a good day for the increasingly uncertain Big 12. Three interim presidents are at the event, including Baylor’s, because Ken Starr resigned. That’s big, because he was on the three-person composition committee.
So there was no way Wednesday was going to be the day the Big 12 made up its mind, and it won’t happen today, either. What Wednesday showed, though, was the league seems split and selfish all at once.
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Cue Country Roads! Watch the highlights as WVU beats Texas Tech and advances to the #Big12BSB semis.
VIDEO: https://t.co/BM4zHB8mxY
— WVU Baseball (@WVUBaseball) May 27, 2016
Fairly ridiculous stuff in Oklahoma City. On Thursday, West Virginia again lost its starting pitcher and again shrugged it off. This time, the Mountaineers beat the Big 12 tournament’s top seed, though Kyle Davis again had the big bat in a 9-4 win against Texas Tech.
“I think it’s getting around the league to be careful when it comes around to the lineup to play West Virginia, because they’ll flip starting pitchers on you in the first inning,” WVU coach Randy Mazey said. “I swear we’re not doing that on purpose. We came down here thinking we have the two best starting pitchers in the Big 12, and they’ve thrown a combined two innings between them, and we are 2-0.”
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Key findings of the Pepper Hamilton report, according to Baylor: pic.twitter.com/BBKkE1ach9
— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) May 26, 2016
“… and in one instance constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault.”
That’s tombstone stuff for the people involved. Baylor had no choice.
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Baylor expected to release announcement at 11am dismissing HC Art Briles.
— Craig Smoak (@CraigSmoak) May 26, 2016
Baylor dismisses coach Art Briles, source told @ESPN. Briles informed players via text, source said. Announcement expected at noon ET
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) May 26, 2016
Hey, we’re 100 days away from WVU v. Missouri, and here’s some serendipity: Bill Connelly’s WVU preview. It’s hopeful for some best-case and/or it’s-about-time scenarios, but it’s also realistic in that the best case doesn’t always happen to unworthy teams (for a reason) and that it just might not be WVU’s time for some or all things.
And then it gets to a pretty valid question.
It’s an interesting thought. What should WVU sustain in a conference that requires infinite travel, far removed from the recruiting base, with no nearby rivals? The Mountaineers have won either seven or eight games three times in their four years in the Big 12 and were lucky to win even four in the other year. If Holgorsen can put 2013 further in the rearview and establish a rhythm in the eight-win range, is that enough? If it isn’t … shouldn’t it be?
