The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

WVU gets a big boost

August 18, 2014 by Mike Casazza

I’m on vacation, but the bat signal beckons. I’m told Jaylon Myers will be in class today at West Virginia University. We vlogged about this last week, and it still seems like a real surprise, remembering I was someone saying we’d probably never see him in a WVU uniform. Surprise or no, this is a big deal, for myriad reasons. There are a lot of people who believe he was WVU’s top signee.

He had a great summer in the classroom and went from being someone who wasn’t really in the thought process to someone who the Mountaineers were crossing their fingers over in the last week or so. And simply put, the junior college All-American can help. Right away? Probably not .. but then again, he can go. I’m not sure he couldn’t handle a few plays and jump on a special teams unit and then grow from there. There was talk before he could be a safety or a corner, and WVU wouldn’t say no to either option. But if there’s a spot for a guy who comes in on the first day of class, it’s cornerback, where a coach can say, “Hey, cover that guy.”

More importantly, Worley/Myers is a nice look for 2015.

C-A-L-I-C-C-H-I-O!

August 15, 2014 by Mike Casazza

I’d say we’re a long way from that day. You know Mike Calicchio’s name and you know the spelling now.

The cool part about Mike Calicchio getting a scholarship — in truth, he, like Dayron Wilson, retained a scholarship — is obvious. I don’t need to tell you what a welcome relief it is for a kid and his family. The other cool part is the attention the kid gets and the inevitability his story is told — or in Calicchio’s case, re-told.

We’ve obsessed about him for a while.

But he got more and deserved attention at player interviews Friday and I’m pretty happy so many were so interested in getting to know him and what he’s been through to arrive at where he is today. Like Dana Holgorsen said Thursday, great kid, great story, and he’ll remain a big part of what the Mountaineers do in 2014.

Friday Feedback

by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, honest with you from the git go. We weren’t supposed to be here today because I’m stealing a few off days before the season starts — and I’m doing it next weekend, too — but I didn’t want to leave without making the bed. That nonsense from Monday and then Wednesday deserves more attention than I’ve given it, but I’m going to warn you now that my opinion is strong and firm here and it might not be popular. I don’t want to leg drop the Macho Man, but here goes.

First, I understand my opinion isn’t any better than anyone else’s. These are opinions and not facts, and the biggest reason we’re all here is because we have and share and defend and sometimes change our opinions. You and I are coming from different places and we want and admire, we frown at and are disappointed by different things from the head coach.

But, man, I have a hard time thinking on the same level as the people who didn’t know what Dana Holgorsen was saying Monday. And my opinion is that if you were offended or appalled or shocked by Dana stating what’s a commonly accepted reality, you probably don’t have a right to be offended or appalled or shocked. That conversation isn’t for you and you shouldn’t be shaping it.

Stop here for a moment … before you leave forever. I’m not saying you can be disappointed Dana said it or that you can’t wish the coach of your team had exercised better judgment. You can. We’re dealing with different emotions there, you see? I understand, never mind condone, that particular response.

But the people who have an issue with Dana going where he went, who decided to make that a headline? Nope. Nope.

This is a big part of a big reason why I don’t think press conferences should be televised or streamed. I post them here. But I do not like it. I pushed back against it for a long time. (Something about giving away the quotes before I write the story bothers me to this day.) But now I accept that if I don’t someone else will, and I risk losing you to some other place. But they’re press conferences, not public conferences. They exist for us to ask questions and then take the information contained within to the public. A portion of the audience doesn’t … speak the language, so to speak … and there’s no translator to Dana’s left or in a little box inset in the corner. People hear and react and things start spinning.

Let me ask you a question: Who among the people in that room that day, or even the people who cover the team who weren’t there that day, made a meal of it? Your answer should be “Nobody.” Isn’t that odd? Yet that’s the reality because those people know and who are around Dana, who know what he says and how he says things and the difference between the two, they knew the conversation we were having. I don’t want to get into the matter of who made a deal of it and why. I feel like we  just had a similar conversation. And I think my point speaks louder.

We’re going to talk a lot about this after this, so I’ll wrap this up now, but what Dana did Monday was essentially admit to speeding. Someone’s going to say, “Why is it so hard to obey the speed limit?” And I’ll reply, “You must be fun at parties.”

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words … not uh, can’t get past it … MOTOR BOAT!

Dann White said:

Are you saying that you didn’t want to spill the beans here about another beat writer? It appears that in this day and age, a reporter can make news by reporting it, or tweeting it; if there’s a difference. Is that OK?
I wonder if the party that tweeted those remarks feels any responsibility for the furor they caused? Seems unfair to publish quotes out of context and/or without explaining it was said as a joke, because that is truly how it sounded to me. The over-reaction to the coach’s remark was straight out of Watergate or Lewinsky-gate.
I probably wouldn’t be so curious about this most recent gaffe, but after seeing HCDH letting Hertzel slide so generously, I don’t like seeing him embarrassed or undermined by those he opens up to. (I guess I’m starting to like Dana, I don’t recall feeling protective of him before)

I’m saying I’m not prosecuting a fellow beat writer. We don’t do that, or at least we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t delight in a coach or a player or an administrator blowing up a fellow writer. Again, I understand why it happened, and maybe on some level of recourse or closure, it had to happen. But I’m not going to applaud it. I’m on the other team. And I’ve been in that seat before. That medicine tastes awful. I’m still angry there were some “reporters” laughing about it. I don’t want any of them on my side of the fence. 

Continue reading…

Video blog: Day 15

August 14, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Dana Holgorsen: Day 15

by Mike Casazza

Here’s the full version. Good news in there on Mike Calicchio, surprising news on a cornerback competition and absolutely no news on Dana not liking to trick out the quarterback position.

Thank goodness, today’s presser wasn’t terrible

by Mike Casazza

That was just the beginning.

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Return of the diamond?

by Mike Casazza

As you know, WVU has all those running backs and we’ve wondered before, “What will the Mountaineers do with all those bodies and all that talent?” We’re starting to get some answers.

Continue reading…

This whole thing is so dumb

August 13, 2014 by Mike Casazza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85r4PFHA7vs#t=1007 Dana Holgorsen decided to, or more likely was made to, clarify the remark he made Monday about how lying is part of recruiting.

“At my press conference on Monday, I was speaking with a group of our beat reporters, and the subject of the NCAA legislation concerning unlimited meals and its impact on recruiting was brought up. In a lighthearted moment, I made a comment in jest that was meant to imply that the unlimited meals will be an important selling point with recruits and that all coaches will have to be salesmen on this matter. I further implied that the best way for recruits to understand what really is occurring on a campus is by having them talk to the current student-athletes. I used a poor choice of words in explaining this position.”

I’m not outraged by this, because I think it’s insane and it shouldn’t occupy my time, but I’m shocked it happened. No way he walked out of there Monday and thought, “I just stepped in it.” But then it happened. The reaction across the web was narrow in its focus — let’s be honest, too, and say it was a bigger deal because Dana said it — and performed mostly without context of the conversation and the content of the question. Those things kind of matter. That this clarification happened two days later ought not merely whisper to you, either. It’s the worst part because this had already gone away and been replaced by the next line of things that get displayed in that sect of short attention span theater that is digital journalism. Twitter has a short memory when it comes to stuff like that because people look for and find and feast on the next thing, be it big or little. Now it’s back in the cycle and, just you watch, people will make a meal out of the content of Dana’s clarification statement, which is high comedy considering such common sense at the outset could have prevented this in the first place. Actually, here’s the worst part: The Dana Holgorsen we’ve had fun with and laughed with and so enjoyed during camp will zip it up now while the people who poked at a mole hill won’t have to deal with that repercussion. Thanks a lot, gang.

Let’s keep the WVU v. MU thing rolling

by Mike Casazza

Today began like this …

(That story … tremendously tremendous.) The FBH tweet was then favorited by Real Bob’s daughter, among many others. Because it’s funny. Not because WVU doesn’t much care for playing Marshall in basketball. No.

Then we had the Jacob McCrary thing — look for him to try to get in at Northwestern Mississippi Community College; WVU has a nice rapport with that staff — and then some sniping at a Marshall columnist (not this one …).

Now we have this: The Mountaineers can kindasorta thank the Thundering Herd for acquiring Shaq Riddick.

But the Mountaineers didn’t really know about Riddick until May.

“I got a phone call saying, ‘Hey, this kid is leaving and he’s a 6-6 defensive end,’ ” Gibson remembered. “I got the film sent to me and watched it on my cell phone. I was in Florida recruiting and I watched about eight to 10 plays and said, ‘We need to get this guy,’ and we went to work on it.”

Gibson said the early part of Riddick’s highlight tape was a series of plays from the loss to Marshall. Riddick had seven tackles, two sacks and three tackles for a loss. He ended up with 81/2 sacks and hasn’t shown anything different with the Mountaineers.

“He’s special as far as that’s concerned,” Gibson said. “Is he going to be a guy who beats double teams and comes through the gap to stop the run every snap? No, but we understand his limitations with that.”

(Updated) On erstwhile WVU receiver recruits

by Mike Casazza

That’d be Jacob McCrary, who got the definitive news he wasn’t going to make the grade and enroll at WVU. He would subsequently tweet that he had to do “what’s best for me and my family.”

That means getting into a university right away as opposed to waiting, and it seems as though that means going to Marshall, which accepts non-qualifiers and of late has developed some quite nicely.

McCrary told the dot-coms last night he’d committed to the Thundering Herd and he then retweeted a few messages welcoming him to the Marshall family … but we’ll see about all that.

(Update! Like, Immediate Update. As in, I scheduled the post to publish at 10:10 a.m. and at 10:10:40 a.m. McCrary tweeted and flipped the whole thing upside down. Sort of. I’ll explain.

Anyhow, here’s his update.

OK. Refer to the original entry where I said that doing what’s best for McCrary and his family “means getting into a university right away as opposed to waiting.” Waiting means a year or two years in a junior college. That’s not free and, initially, it’ll ruin a kid’s appetite.

It would seem he slept on it and came to accept the long play was the right play. He’ll enroll in a junior college — I’ve heard one of the many in Mississippi — and we can safely assume he’ll be welcome at WVU so long as he graduates. That Marshall part was always weird, and I wonder if the long play was the only play.

Go to the second paragraph in the original entry and the part where we cap the talk about McCrary going to Marshall with “… but we’ll see about all that.” Grades are grades, man. Marshall has admission policies, too, and we had our doubts last night.

So there’s the fresh coat of paint on the original. The rest stands.)

Marshall isn’t new to taking kids that couldn’t get in at WVU — and that’s not a slight; it’s a segue. Remember Deon-Tay McManus? He was WVU’s big-time 2012 wide receiver commit from Dunbar who ended up having to prep a year in Atlanta and sit out last season as a non-qualifier at Marshall. He’s a tight end now, which could be a scary proposition in that offense and with his size and skills.

Anyhow, McCrary’s miss ends WVU’s run of signed and enrolled players and it stands to reason WVU will lose more from the 2014 class. Dontae Angus, Jaylon Myers and Justin Scott are still out there, though I heard earlier this week that Myers had a good summer and isn’t the long shot he once was. He’s got a chance, but it has to happen by the 22nd. If I had to rank the remaining three in order of most likely to enroll to least likely, it’d be Myers, Angus, Scott.