The only way my shirt could be more American was if Betsy Ross sewed it. pic.twitter.com/9LKw4TpXNT
— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) June 16, 2014
If you’ve been around here for a few years, you remember that shirt. I still have it and I bust it out for special occasions. It’s out of the box tonight.
More nostalgia? Try not to get a little dusty …
And since Parks asked … open post? Open post!
Dana Holgorsen did 20 minutes with Bruce Feldman on Feldman’s newish podcast at Fox Sports. Right away the two got into the season-opening game against Alabama. That led to the obvious and useful connections to Texas A&M, Kevin Sumlin and Jake Spavital and to Oklahoma, which is startlingly similar to the Mountaineers thanks to Bob Stoops once hiring Holgorsen mentor Mike Leach.
What wasn’t mentioned was something Dana told me last week. The Alabama v. Auburn game film will be quite useful for preparations.
“They’re quite a bit different, but it’s a spread,” Holgorsen said. “It’s more of a run game spread, but it’s up-tempo, the sets are good and there’s a lot of motion. It’ll be good for us.”
Bill Stewart wasn’t that off base when he spoke up in 2010 and Dana Holgorsen seemed to anticipate forthcoming changes when he spoke out last summer. It seems WVU is riding the wave again and making sure it doesn’t crash when the landscape changes here very soon. The Mountaineers will meet among themselves this week to talk about what to do if — or is it when? — student-athletes are allowed to market their name and likenesses.
Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which fixed up the time machine this week and went back to September 2011. We were prompted, of course, by Oliver Luck regaling Brett McMurphy with Luck’s “favorite story that hasn’t been written.”
What Luck shared was interesting: There was thought given to a Big East/Big 12 merger and that thought gained some traction.
I love time capsule and anthology stuff, so that was fun to look at from a different place and at a different time. But unless you’re new here, you’ll remember we talked a whole lot about that way back then. I mean, it was literally part of the first story I filed on the expansion debacle. And not only that, but Bob Huggins was on board with the idea.
Anyhow, that idea had legs here from the beginning and it never went away — but it was never confirmed the way Luck did for McMurphy.
Why?
That’s a good question. I remember going on the radio a day or two after that and getting mocked … as the guest. I hung up. Haven’t been invited back since. (I was in a weird place then, I guess. You’ll remember that followed a messy argument on the air with a college football coach over another matter.)
I really didn’t know Oliver back then. He’d been on campus a while, but most of our interactions were … well, they wouldn’t put me in a position to expect him to tell me secrets. Are you firing Stewart? Are you hiring Holgorsen? Are you aware the replacement was kicked out of a casino? Are you aware the incumbent is torpedoing the replacement?
So on and so forth.
The idea came from somewhere else. And it was out there and people were talking about it because it was nuanced and unusual and bold and sort of irresistible. Still, not everyone wanted to believe it, and to be honest, it had its demerits and those led to detractors.
I’m not sure what heights of popularity it ever reached and I always suspected the Big 12 wasn’t in love with the idea of Gen. Marinatto rowing ashore and saving the village. I always suspected the Big 12, perhaps stubbornly, believed it’d be OK. I’m also pretty sure the way Luck and Jim Clements involved and proved themselves appealed to those who would soon be their new brethren.
But what cracks me up about this as I revisit it is it wasn’t written about very much. When it was, it was derided. JackBo devoted a lot of space to the possibility and people thought he was overdosing on argyle. I remember editing one of his columns and then Tweeting that people’s heads were going to explode when they read it a day later. I got bludgeoned for that, because the column wasn’t new as much as it was insistent, and people hungered for something new every day. But that was my point. It wasn’t new information that was going to split skulls. It was this lingering idea abut a merger that people weren’t wrapping their minds around that’d do the mind boggling.
Turns out that was my favorite story that no one wanted to believe.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, don’t screw up.
MontanaEer said:
This will be fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pK5HmuCMBM
I’m irate the student section egregiously and unforgivably dropped the ball on an entire season of Remi Dibo. There’s no way that didn’t play a part in him leaving for France. There wasn’t a giant Zeus Lester head in the crowd. I never saw a beach cruiser. No one wore plaid flannels buttoned to the top. When he checked into the game, the Coliseum never told us “Dibo coming. Di-bo!” Then again, I never got to use my “When the Remi’s in the system, ain’t no tellin’ Will I brick ’em? Will I swish ’em?” line. But my point is this can’t happen again. So help me go if the kids whiff on Billydee Williams. I’ll never, ever, ever forgive them.
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Nikki Izzo-Brown is very much invested in the immediate future of international women’s soccer and what it means to the fate of her fantastic program. The Kicking Nikkis have been blessed with help from our friends north of the border for many, many years. Some of WVU’s best women’s players of the past, present and future are Canadian.
And while we witness the start of the World Cup today and take in the fever the Brazilians have after the buzz leading to this moment, consider for a moment that Canada has the under-20 Women’s World Cup in August and the actual World Cup next summer.
Repercussions, eh?
WVU is probably going to have two players on the roster and one starter — and Izzo-Brown believes Kadeisha Buchanan can be one of the best to ever play her position. So from that comes a benefit, of course, in the form of what can be considered an impossible-to-predict bump from the exposure and the path that leads from Canada to Morgantown.
“Obviously, for the reputation of the university itself, that would be huge,” Izzo-Brown said. “For sure it’s important for recruiting purposes, too, to show how they’ve developed and what kind of impact they have.
“Kadeisha literally got off a plane from West Virginia, went into the friendly against the U.S. and scored. That showed what her development has been like at West Virginia, so it’s huge for us for recruits to come in and look at Kadeisha and Ashley and see two kids playing on the biggest stage right now who get to develop at the highest level.”
This is a big deal for me. It might not be a big deal for you, but if I’m being honest, that only helps. I can watch from home or at an establishment and I’m not going to have a big crowd clouding my experience. And no one’s changing the channel because, hey, it’s my house. Or because there are knives at that establishment.
Anyhow, it’s a little bit like vacationing on an island. I get away from the crowded sports I cover and go somewhere I won’t find a ton of people. Its beautiful. And the World Cup is obviously important for WVU men’s soccer coach and woebegone Arsenal fan Marlon LeBlanc, though not for the reason we might think.
Experienced and successful with international recruiting, you’d figure the World Cup and the development of the USMNT would help WVU woo players to Morgantown. That’s not inaccurate, but that’s not LeBlanc’s focus. He’s an invested watcher for his own enjoyment more than for his own benefit. For LeBlanc, the hallmark of this World Cup is that it’s unlike others and that the immediate fate and future of recruiting isn’t at the mercy of the success of the event or the Americans.
“I don’t know if we need our international team to have a great World Cup in order for us to draw people to the fact we have so much invested in the student-athlete financially, academically, athletically, just across the board,” LeBlanc said. “We have (international) kids who have never seen anything like it before, apart from some really big clubs in Europe that cover every expense.
“When you’re able to present them an alternative like that, it certainly resonates with them. They all want to go pro. Every kid dreams of that, especially when they’re in an academy, but it’s humbling when you’re let go from that organization you thought for your entire life you were going to sign with. All of a sudden, you’ve got to worry about where to go next and when they see what some of the bigger institutions are able to offer, that changes the dynamic.”
He has a new contract to keep him warm, but WVU’s baseball coach has to feel a little … contracted? … by what’s going on around him. Ryan McBroom and Corey Walter are seniors who were drafted, so Mazey knew he was going to be without them next season. As expected, though, WVU is losing a heap of players to the MLB draft. A record six players were picked last week and that includes four juniors who either signed already or will soon sign: Bobby Boyd, Sean Carley (to the clean-shaven Yankees!), Harrison Musgrave and John Means.
That’s WVU’s two best offensive players, top two starters and closer. But, hey, you recruit for a reason, and WVU recruited pretty well. But WVU is also losing junior college transfer Greg Maisto, who signed Wednesday, while high school pitcher Caleb Ferguson has until July 18 to decide to sign or to attend college. We’ll keep an eye on that, because between frowning at Johnny Baseball — nee Football — and watching “The Other Guys,” his Twitter timeline is pretty entertaining.
It was a while back when I begged out of some of the expected and regular duties here because I was going to be working on some stuff for the summer. Some of that stuff has happened, will soon happen and will happen even later, but we at the Daily Mail are in the midst of a fun summer series that focuses entirely on the wave of NCAA reform.
Obviously I won’t e giving it away here, but it goes without saying a slice of the various conversations has revolved around the proposed and approved unlimited meals, or as we call it here, the deregulation of eating. I’ve had a couple of people from different walks of college of athletics tell me they won’t be surprised, and almost expect, to see that backed up a year, or at least until the New Year.
Continue reading…
We’re in the midst of the second week of the new eight-week summer workout period in college football. It was a long time coming and it really didn’t make much sense for basketball to have a similar setup the past few years and for football to only want the same. But for some reason, basketball had the window to work with players during the summer months and football coaches couldn’t have any interaction with or control over players during June and July … even though they were allowed to do it in the winter before spring practice.
Forget the football ramifications that come with this new system, as hard as that may be because they are so sizable and significant. Consider the welfare of the student in student-athlete and what that means to the football aspect. Summer classes are a big, big deal for college football players now, and those voluntary workouts were voluntary in name only and as useful as the player made them.
Coaches now have oversight in the summer and can use punitive measures to make sure a player is going to class or study hall or wasn’t taking the workouts seriously. Before? There was nothing a coach could do except let bad habits linger and hope an enforcer emerged from inside the huddle.
So the Mountaineers are getting together for five days a week for eight total hours, which is what the NCAA allows. WVU, though, won’t be doing exactly what is permissible. Only six of the eight weeks will be used because the NCAA has written another prescription to make football programs right. There’s a two-week dead period in the recruiting cycle during the eight summer weeks. “They put it in there,” West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said, “so coaches would go on vacation.”
We’ve spent considerable space here the past two months commenting on how the NCAA suddenly seems interested in the welfare of the student-athlete both during and after a playing career. That dead period is a similar tip of the cap to the well-being of coaches, and Holgorsen believes the Mountaineers will be better because of it.
“What was happening was all these high school kids would tour everywhere in the summer and a coach would get a call on July 3 or July 5 saying, ‘I’m popping into town. I need someone to show me around,’” Holgorsen said. “We had no choice but to show them around and coaches weren’t getting any downtime, weren’t getting a vacation.”
The dead period was intended to lift that burden. The eight weeks in the summer return that weight to the conscience of all college coaches.
There are nine weeks between the start of the new eight-week window and the start of preseason camp at your favorite school. If a head coach uses all eight, he leaves just one week for leisure.
“We kicked it around as a staff: ‘OK, recruiting is dead those two weeks, but being here with the kids is kind of important. Do we need to be here the four weeks in July, too?’” Holgorsen said. “In the end, what we didn’t want was for Aug. 1 to roll around and the coaches didn’t have any vacation time and we’ve all been around the players too much and everyone is sick of each other.”
The O’Bannon Lawsuit began yesterday and was … expectedly uneventful, though nevertheless informative. Whether it was lively or not, it wasn’t going to be the boldest relevant headline of the day. No, that went to the somewhat unexpected $20 million settlement between the NCAA and the plaintiffs looking for their payout from EA Sports games.
Not coincidentally, the start of the trial, and the very day student-athletes won a second battle for the use of their likenesses, saw Oliver Luck take to the athletic department’s homepage to speak to and to caution fans of the Mountaineers.
So what could a decision in favor of the plaintiffs actually mean? Well, the judge may allow student-athletes to use their own names, images and likenesses for commercial purposes. For example, a WVU student-athlete could arrange with a local automobile dealership or restaurant or dry-cleaner to shoot a commercial in which the student-athlete endorses the dealership. The student-athlete would receive compensation for this appearance, much like a professional athlete would, and analogous to professional sports, the student-athlete would not be allowed to use the marks and logos of his or her school.Also, a student-athlete may be allowed to sell autographs, pictures or memorabilia or license archival footage and then benefit materially from that activity.In addition, the student-athlete may be allowed to create merchandise that is specific to the individual, i.e., with the player’s name on the back. Simply put, college student-athletes would be able to do many of the same things that you see from professional athletes and with the same constraints that professional athletes face.But the more attractive goal for the plaintiffs is to receive a piece of the television pie. The plaintiffs’ argument here is that the name, image and likeness of the student-athlete is also being used without consent by the television networks. Needless to say, the television contracts are the mother’s milk for the conferences and their member schools.