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

How Quinton Spain got DOWN to 348 pounds

April 4, 2011 by Mike Casazza

The former skill position star from Southern Virginia put in a lot of work with weights and with his will after he got with a nutritionist … and doesn’t that sound like a peach of a job?

See, last August, before that redshirt season, Spain showed up showed up with 370 pounds rather amply over his 6-foot, 5-inch frame. He was so big then that when he smiled his dimples had dimples.

The man didn’t have a waist. He had a circumference.

“I was at home. I wasn’t working out. All I did was eat,” he said after practice on Friday.

And you can imagine, there wasn’t any orders for “small fries” with that triple Whopper.

The Mountaineers were somewhat aghast when they saw him, weigh in at more than double the weight of running back Tavon Austin, so they turned a nutritionist on him.

“I talked to my nutrition lady and she told me I had to work out more and eat less,” he said. “She told me no fried food. Eat lite. Don’t drink soda and juice, drink water and milk.”

It was a good thing that didn’t get out or the stock in Coke and Minute Maid would have crashed immediately.

Spain wanted to play, though, and was diligent in his effort to lose weight.

“It was hard to adjust to at first, but if I want to play I have to do it,” he said.

How Daron Roberts can help WVU

by Mike Casazza

It’s a week old now, but the story about Daron Roberts and his sudden ascent in the coaching business is still a pretty intriguing one. You don’t see a whole lot of people who did what he did. You hear about them. You root for them. It just doesn’t always work, though.

This one did.

It’s worth repeating: He sure seems like a humble and personable guy who really wants to enjoy all of this and who understands he’s a fairytale. He’s probably told his story thousands of times now, which is fine because he’s ready with useful anecdotes.

Those college camps he worked are somewhat exclusive. They take coaches from all sorts of colleges and high schools, but they don’t generally take aides to senators and former presidential candidates or assistants to lieutenant governors who have no coaching experience.

In fact, the registration forms anyone can find online attempt to designate who’s who. Roberts found a way around that.

“I listed the school I went to in Texas. What I didn’t say was the school I coached,” he said. “It said ‘Name’ and ‘Affiliation.’ I kind of interpreted that loosely. I’m a Mount Pleasant alumnus. Maybe they assumed I coached there.”

Right now he’s working quickly to learn to coach receivers for the first time in his brief career. He’s also in charge of the punt and kickoff return teams, but WVU won’t do a lot of work on that in spring practice. Again, it’s an intriguing story with what appears to be a happy ending somewhere down the road, but for the purposes of here and now, there is a lingering question.

How can this 32-year-old Harvard Law graduate, who has been a volunteer assistant, quality control assistant and secondary assistant for four years in the NFL, be an asset coaching receivers and special teams units at a BCS school?

“Kids – and it doesn’t matter where you are – have problems,” Holgorsen said. “They deal with things every day, from an academic standpoint to temptations around town to time management to getting worn out in the weight room to getting yelled at out on the practice field.

“There are a lot of issues and having a guy like that who has accomplished what he accomplished and done things on his own can be a good sounding board for the guys.”

Linda Burdette-Good somersaults into the sunset

by Mike Casazza

Sunday delivered some not-so-surprising surprising news. Linda Burdette-Good, WVU’s uber successful gymnastics coach, is calling it a career after 37 seasons at the school. That’s an enormous number. So, too, are her 644 victories. No coach has ever led a WVU team to more. If you ever met her, you’re probably better because of it.

Before you even allow yourself to go there, this was all on her own, a result of her own decision and not someone else’s doing. I’d heard she was getting close, but was nevertheless not expecting the news. WVU has only had one other gymnastics coach. She managed the first season. Burdette-Good had coached every season after that one and with pretty good results. She won and always had good kids who were generally great in the classroom. I can’t remember trouble around her program, either.

I say that because the first beat I actually worked was covering WVU gymnastics for the Daily Athenaeum. It is with certainty that I say she helped a knucklehead kid who knew almost nothing about the sport become a knucklehead kid who knew quite a bit more about the sport and learned to appreciate it. I still follow, though from a distance.

She’ll be part of the committee that searches for her replacement. Oliver Luck can go home for a few days later this month and shop around at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships in Cleveland. This one ought to be an interesting hire. WVU is a name program nationally. WVU is not in one of those regions that produces consistent talent. I’m curious to see where Luck & Co. aim.

And good luck to whoever has to follow Burdette-Good … but also good luck to her.

Friday Feedback

April 1, 2011 by Mike Casazza

You’re going to consider the possibility you might hate me, but today is another Friday without the Friday Feedback. I’m giving a presentation on stat interpretation tonight at an APBRmetrics seminar in Houston and the preparation took me a whole lot longer than I ever imagined.

Nevertheless, I’m pretty excited and I figure I can learn a few things and share them later. I hear there are a few games around town over the weekend, too. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to go to them. Perhaps I’ll be an invited guest. Perhaps you’ll forgive me.

Just a few things before we go for the weekend …

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Jennifer Hudson must have gone to Kentucky

March 31, 2011 by Mike Casazza

She’s one-and-done as the “One Shining Moment” singer.

CBS is bringing back Luther Vandross. As a gesture of goodwill, last year’s OSM has been redone without the future Mrs. David Otunga. There are some oddities — Cincinnati dunking against WVU at the Big East Tournament, for example — but I gather that’s an edit where the camera focused on Hudson instead of the tournament, which was the biggest beef people had with the package. Enjoy it again for the first time.

WVU stops rolling in money, is sorry for bad communication

by Mike Casazza

More and more now my friends and my wife and my wife’s friends and their wives and their friends will ask me something about something the athletic department has done. The general question is “Why would they do that?”

Frequently I do not have an answer. I have a gesture: Extend right hand, fold pinky and ring finger down, rub thumb in circular motion against middle and index fingers. The athletic department is a business. Has been for years, really, but the way things are now is different than the way things were even a few years ago.

With Oliver Luck in charge, change is accelerating and aggressive and the aim now is to increase earning potential in a lot of areas. There’s going to be collateral damage, but, in truth, WVU and many, many other schools have to do what they have to do.

Which brings us to this: The athletic department didn’t generate a lot of warm feelings when it suddenly introduced the revamped parking situation at the Coliseum this past season. What it did accomplish, though, was generating revenue that hadn’t been there before.

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How to go from 58 to 100

by Mike Casazza

Jock Sanders caught 69 passes last year. In the two years before that spent as the main pass-catching option in offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen_’s decidedly more pass-happy offense, he caught 72 and 59 balls.

Brad Starks was on all three of those teams and is a senior this year in Dana Holgorsen’s first season with the Mountaineers. Starks caught all of 65 passes combined those three years. Tavon Austin was a sophomore last season. He caught 58 balls.

Yet already you get the sense those numbers are going to go up this season. Way up.

WVU is going to throw the ball in 2011. A lot. And someone has to catch those passes. Going solely on Wednesday’s first practice, it might be the other team, but ideally, it’s going to be Austin or Starks, Sticks or Stedman Bailey or J.D. Woods. Or someone not yet on the radar.

Trace the history of this offense, not only at Oklahoma State and Houston and Texas Tech, but also at Stephen F. Austin, where WVU’s new inside receivers coach Shannon Dawson was an offensive coordinator, and someone always gets 100 balls. It’s actually a measure of success because if this guy gets 100, then that guy gets 80 and that guy gets 65 and that guy gets 40. The Mountaineers believe they have options for this guy and that guy, as well as a simple plan to make it happen.

“Throw the ball more to him,” he answered.

Duh!

“That’s just the way it is,” Dawson said. “At Oklahoma State, Justin Blackmon I think caught 19 balls the year before (actually, it was 20, but who’s counting) and he caught 111 last year. Do you think he was thrown the same number of balls?”

Let it be noted that the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State, in his first and only year there, was the same Dana Holgorsen who now runs the WVU offense.

Understand, Blackmon wasn’t exactly a world beater until Holgorsen got his hands on him. At Plainview High in Ardmore, Okla., he caught 61 passes as a senior with 14 touchdowns. He was “only” a three-star recruit, according to Rivals.com, and was listed at No. 91 among wide receiver prospects in the class of 2008.

Last year he was the Big 12’s Player of the Year and winner of the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver.

The fact of the matter is in this offense, having a 100-catch receiver is commonplace.

“We’ve had a 100-catch receiver probably in the last five years, every year,” said Dawson, who was talking about the people who run this offense. “I had a kid catch 120 two years ago. Blackmon caught 100 and whatever last year. A kid at Texas Tech caught 130-some one year. That’s not out of the norm.”

The football team practiced this morning

March 30, 2011 by Mike Casazza

Can’t tell you much else beyond that. It was a rather uneventful 30 minutes were were allowed to observe and photograph — apart from a spectacular media/sports information blowup that came earlier than ever before. We’re in midseason form! 

Iwas more interested in watching the coaches operate and interact, but Geno Smith was mobile and at least threw the ball with some pop. The first pass we saw, though, was intercepted by Brantwon Bowser, who had an intereption earlier. The second pass we saw sailed 10 yards out of bounds.

A seemingly more svelte Shawne Alston ran well and Trey Johnson ran fast. Bruce Irvin terrorized whoever was playing tackle on either side and I felt pretty bad for RT Pat Eger, who on the first day couldn’t keep up with Irvin. After practice, wide receivers coach Shannon Dawson taunted Irvin and said, “No sacks today, Bruce!” Irvin looked as stunned as Pat Eger.

Tyler Urban stood out, as well. He caught some passes and was, of course, asked about later when Bill Stewart met the media.

Only Stewart and the assistant coaches were available, so don’t expect to see Dana Holgorsen’s take on his first day of practice. That was planned previously by Holgorsen, who wanted to get a few days under his belt before he talked about what was and was not happening.

Obviously, Daron Roberts was the most popular among the pool of assistants. His story is very cool, we know, but the story behind the story is even better. He got a workout on the first day and threw a lot of passes in drills we saw. Click here to see.

(Update: Here are some interviews from after practice. Looks like everyone is saving Daron Roberts stuff … which is good. So, too, Shannon Dawson telling a reporter he’s more athletically apt to run out to get a hamburger than run a replacement or slant route.)

This did happen

by Mike Casazza

WVU baseball, hindered by a happiness hangover after winning a series against South Florida, lost to Morehead State Tuesday at Power Park. The Mountaineers were in a tricky spot — classic letdown type of game , supposedly big occasion playing in Charleston, homecoming for arguably the team’s best player — and they got caught. They need to avoid the trickier spot and the subsequent slide that could follow something like this.

Turning the page, spring football began this morning and WVU has all things compliance covered. Report, of some sort, to follow practice. I understand Daron Roberts will be in attendance, so prepare yourself for the onslaught.

Things about spring

March 29, 2011 by Mike Casazza

Spring football begins tomorrow. It ends April 29. There are specific things that can and can’t happen in between, all of which is covered in the intimidating, yet comprehensible NCAA maunal.

People generally think of the spring as a dress rehearsal for the summer and somewhat inconsequential when you put what happens here next to what happens there. And maybe there’s a lot of truth to that. It’s not as laissez-faire when it comes to governance and compliance, which, of course, matters at WVU.

Here’s a look at how the spring is legislated by the NCAA.

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