Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which turned back the clock this morning. I went over to WVU’s pro day at the indoor practice facility because Charles Sims and Will Clarke are probably both getting drafted in May and Darwin Cook has a chance to hook on somewhere, if not late in the draft, than soon thereafter as a free agent. It gets hard to get in touch with those guys as the draft approaches.
And then there were two people I had to put eyes on. One was Howard Jones, the Shepherd University star who wowed a lot of folks as a top performer at the combine. (He ran a 4.45 40, I was told, today.)
The other was Noel Devine. If you’ve only been here a while, you should know we used to spend a lot of time just watching Noel’s high school highlights and then his college highlights. I’m happy to report that the aura still shrouds him. He’s still jacked. He’s still stupid fast. And people still watch him walk by and then turn to the closest person and say, “Hey, that’s Noel Devine.”
And why not? He put 225 pounds up 24 times and ripped off a 10 foot, 8 inch broad jump. Then he ran a few 40s — they didn’t give us times, or any other useful information, which is dumb because we’re invited to cover it, but I saw people time him at 4.34 and 4.42 — and zipped through the cone drills and caught some passes and, oh, did I mention he has a stomach bug and was puking all morning?
Devine, who is now 26 years old, is making another run at the NFL. He’s healthy — healthier than he was at his 2010 pro day when he had a bum toe and ankle — and says he has his heart and mind right after being a little humbled the past few years. He hopes the game has changed, too, and will accept a person of his skill and, yes, size. If not, his rights still belong to the Montreal Alouettes.
It was a fun chat I’ll turn into a nice story, but I really do hope the guy gets the happy ending he now seeks.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, rampage.
avb31 said:
Here’s a vote for an NCAA bracket contest.
Unrelated, but the women’s team kind of got screwed. Got a 2 seed and will have to play AT the 7 seed in the 2nd round. If they win that road game, they get Louisville AT Louisville in the Sweet 16.
That’s a joke.
It is a joke … and it isn’t. The first two rounds aren’t chosen for the women’s tournament like they are for the men’s. The women’s tournament goes to hotbeds where fans will flock and it’s almost exclusively on campus. Schools submit bids, a few years in advance, I think, and the tournament organizers try to make sense of the sites and matchups. So to some extent, WVU can’t do much about it, but, man, sooner or later the organizers have to do something to make life easier on the Mountaineers. I mean, back-to-back road games would be a bit much for a No. 2 seed, no?
SheikYbuti said:
Maybe WVU and Morgantown need to start bidding to be a host site.
I believe they’ve tried, to no avail.
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