The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

Not that we should doubt him or his ability to turn frowns upside down at the end of a season filled with smiles.

Remember, he thought it was a wonderful development the Big 12 coaches unanimously selected his team to finish in last place.

“Fellas,” Mazey said, “I’ve got some really good news I want to share with you. Everyone in the league voted you last place. Nobody thinks you can do anything. They think you’re by far the worst team in the league. And that’s really good for us. If people underestimate what the Mountaineers are capable of this year, that could be dangerous for them.”

Then he told his players they had an awesome opportunity to play their home games around the state and use it to their advantage.

“We prepared the guys accordingly,” said Mazey, the former TCU assistant who welcomes familiar faces beginning with tonight’s first pitch at 6:30 p.m. “It wasn’t like the schedule was a surprise to us. We knew how much travel there would be going into it.

“I think adversity is easier to overcome if you prepare guys for it. We went into this thing knowing it was going to be a grind academically and with being on the road in hotels and buses, but we made the decision before the season started how we were going to handle that. Nothing has been a real shock to us.”

And there was that time, a day after warning his team about the trappings of success, when he thought a 6-0 deficit in a loss to Pitt following a season-altering Big 12 sweep at Kansas was just divine.

“I congratulated everyone for doing exactly what I asked them to do,” he said. “Every time I’ve given this team a challenge, it has responded. So after the Pitt game, we said like we say all the time: Don’t get caught up in the result, get caught up in the process. They came into the Pitt game with energy and enthusiasm and played hard.

“They scored one more run than we did. That doesn’t overshadow the fact we were coming off a huge conference weekend and we showed up to play. I left that game feeling better about the team than I did when that game started.”

So Saturday’s pep talk should have been expected…

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which, oh, man, what a day for Geno Smith. The New York Jets begin their rookie mini-camp today and Geno’s supposed to wear No. 7, a way around the retired No. 12, an obvious homage to George Costanza and kind of a big deal in New York City.

It’s the end of the beginning for the second-round pick, who easily has more attention on him than the team’s two first-round picks. Combined. He’s been in a defensive position ever since the draft, and honestly, ever since the Pro Football Weekly write-up. He can come out of the corner now and do what he’s been asked to do, which is throw footballs and give the team a reason to move on from the Mark Sanchez era. By doing one or both, he finally gives people something else to talk about when he is the topic of conversation.

It’s not a minor occasion, nor will it be treated like one. He’ll speak to reporters and you better believe that’s going to find its way to television. He’s the latest product of the new cycle, which offers unlimited access to the news, but has to fill all space to justify the limited access. This is how mole hills become mountains. Given the team and the market, he’s not unlike Tim Tebow at this mini-camp — and he ought to hope that comparison ends right there.

The meeting with the media is going to be interesting, for a few reasons. Geno did his requisite press conference upon and after being drafted, but that’s it. People there have tried to get with Geno for a story, but he’s declined, but also taken time to talk to USA Today, which isn’t exactly new. How will that be digested?

And correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like the cycle has already spun around on Geno. It was popular and easy to pick him apart before, during and then after the draft, but for a few weeks now it’s been popular and easy to prop him up and pick apart the people who picked him apart. That sentiment is oftentimes fleeting, so I wonder if we’re back at the beginning, or on the cusp of it, and people will be looking for something or trying for something. This is football now and, by golly, it’s their job to be aggressive and detailed and opinionated.

Which leads me to this: Geno doesn’t have an agent yet. That’s absolutely going to come up because we’re allowed to believe his former representation surreptitiously sprinkled tidbits about Geno’s alleged behavior on the Jets beat so that writers could pick up and report them. And this week, we’ve been led to believe Geno will sign with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Never mind he reportedly met with them and a few others. The story is Jay-Z, because, come on, Jay-Z, but let’s not ignore the obvious here: The subtle suggestion is it’s potentially another bad decision.

I don’t know that to be true, but I really hope he pulls the trigger and gets with Roc Nation. Listen, Jay-Z is not an agent. He ain’t pass the bar, but he know a little bit, enough that you won’t illegally search his trunk. He has people and Roc Nation is working with CAA, which is a reputable agency. Not that it matters much, though. These rookie contracts are formulaic. Apart from little things, like, I don’t know, preferred parking spaces, where he sits on the charter, so on and so forth, there’s very little to negotiate nowadays. Agents aren’t going to mine a tone of hidden money.

So you subsidize. I think, in theory, that’s the benefit of an affiliation with Roc Nation. I don’t want to compare Geno Smith to Skylar Diggins, but I’m about to compare Geno Smith to Skylar Diggins. She was picked No. 2 in the WNBA draft. Not a lot of money there. But she’s marketable and she can make a lot of money outside the sport. A lot. She’s playing for Tulsa now, a town that is to exposure what lead vests are to exposure. Roc Nation’s task is to make Diggins visible throughout the league and the country, which is to say make Diggins a lucrative, and richly rewarded, commodity.

Geno’s in an exponentially more favorable position, of course. This is the NFL. He has a high profile, never mind the reasons. He’s a quarterback. He’s in New York. The cash register is right there. They just have to press the right buttons to get that drawer to fly open. Do you think Jay-Z, or his nation, knows how to get Geno to the right events and in the right rooms and talking with the right people? We’ll see if Geno sees it that way, and then, for certain, we’ll see what everyone else thinks.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, maintain a single lane.

Mack said:

I was wondering where Greg Van Zant is, so I googled him and came across http://www.gvz-sucks.com … What a hidden little gem that is.

In all honesty, Van Zant seems to have done what he was supposed to do. Don’t spend any money and don’t embarrass the school. He did it and he was rewarded with a job for, what, 20 years? But the job has changed. The job he had is no longer the job that exists, even though the job title is the same. Now, the first priority is to win.

If Van Zant is a decent coach, and I honestly have no idea, then he will find a similar job to what he had at WVU. As far as I can tell based on the internet machine, he is not currently coaching college baseball.

It’s a weird scenario. I’m firmly of the belief that a coach’s first job is to keep his job. Whether the rhetoric GVZ offered is the same as what was offered to him is debatable, but he was told to do certain things. And he did. And the program suffered. And that was all permitted by other people. That’s not entirely his fault, but he’s certainly not free of blame. I doubt he works in baseball again. He’s got a bad name here and around the game, but he doesn’t need to work in baseball. He’s a smart guy who had a nice business career before he opted for the dugout.

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

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

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