Before I get to that, though, I have some lousy news for me. And you, really. RTD beat writer Jeff White is taking a position in the University's SID department. That sucks. White was pretty much the best MSM guy covering UVA, and now he's leaving a place where he was well-positioned to dig up a lot of interesting insider bits and new angles and bring them to the masses, and going somewhere where he has access to all the insider bits and new angles and will not be putting them out, ever. In other words, he's going from reporting what we want to know about the program to what they want us to know about the program. Well, it's probably a good deal for White, so yay for him, but boo for me, his blog is one less place for me to find stuff to run my mouth about.
Anyway, recruiting board. It's been a little while, actually, since the last one was early last week and here it is Thursday.
- Removed DE Henry Anderson (Stanford commit, dammit) and CB Karl Butler (Vandy commit.)
- Added LB Holmes Onwukaife to red. Lot of offers here. Onwukaife tried to commit to Michigan last month, but as Michigan had already taken its quota of commitments at his position, he was turned down. It was that situation that caused me to predict (which I still stand by) that Marcus Rush will be a Hoo.
- Added LB Dominique Guinn-Bailey and huge DT Bruce Gaston to yellow. Gaston is being recruited by most of the Big Ten and would be a nice pickup, as a massive, lineman-eating NT is a linchpin of the 3-4 defense.
- For reasons that irritate and mystify and are behind paywalls at the moment so not available here for now, S Ed Reynolds drops from blue to red.
Not a tremendous amount of movement, really. It's a little bit of a quieter period: a lot of guys are setting up and gathering info for a preseason commit so they don't have to deal with both next year's football and this year's football all at once. Come late July and August they'll start dropping like flies for a little while.
Showing posts with label msm stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label msm stuff. Show all posts
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
why the acc is not such a bad place
Without too much surfwebbing or poking into dark corners of the Internet, you can find a general consensus among college football pundits when talking about ACC football as a whole: It stinks.
Continuing with a look at reactions from the ACC Football Kickoff, here is a column from Gregg Doyel at CBSSports.com:
Forget subtraction by addition, ACC troubles deeper
Doyel did not go to the Kickoff to give us fluff pieces on Clint Sintim and John Phillips. If you skim the article, the first thing you may notice is this: The first thing Doyel mentions is the free food, drinks, cigars, and golf to be had at the Kickoff. So we have a pretty good idea of what Doyel did go to the Kickoff for. Another thing he did not apparently do much of is talk to the players, except to glean a throwaway quote that he can mock after having bravely proven his point.
The premise of Doyel's article is that the ACC started to suck right around the time the conference expanded, only he goes on to say that it wasn't the fault of expansion. Fair enough; the expansion teams have filled 3 of the 6 slots in the ACC CG so far. Doyel does blame a number of factors, which I don't need to repeat verbatim as you can pretty easily read the article yourself.
He even gets a few things right. ACC quarterbacks do tend to stink. Georgia Tech fans suffered through four years of watching Reggie Ball ignore wide-open receivers (especially Calvin Johnson) in order to throw into double coverage. So they can attest.
Doyel also mentions the fall of Florida State as a factor. More on this later. Miami, too, hasn't been the stalwart they were supposed to be.
On the face of it, then, the premises appear sound. But the statistics and other claims fall apart under scrutiny.
First claim: In the four years before expansion, the ACC was 14-10 in bowl games. In the four years since, the ACC was 14-17. So there were seven "extra" bowls, and the ACC lost them all.
Here is the actual rundown. The records listed are: first, the ACC record before expansion (2000-2003) and second, after expansion: 2004-2007. These are the top four bowls the ACC plays in and they're the only ones the ACC has been affiliated with in all eight years.
BCS: 0-4, 1-3
Gator: 3-1, 2-2
Peach: 3-1, 1-3
C****s S****s: 2-2, 3-1
8-8 before, 7-9 after. A very, very slight decrease. This is not enough to proclaim the downfall of the ACC. That means in the remaining games, the ACC was 6-2, followed by 7-8 after expansion. This is significant. Only eight teams represented the ACC in not-these bowls before expansion; nearly twice that many after expansion. Two things: one, the ranks of the bowls have swelled considerable. Two, we're pretty obviously sending worse teams to bowls than before. As expansion grows the top of the league, the teams that were there and were always mediocre are being pushed to the bottom - but they get to keep going to bowls.
Second claim: The rise of the Big East. This is hysterically funny. The Big East has had a better bowl record than the ACC in the past four years; this is supposed to highlight the "fall" of the ACC. Except when you look at how they've fared head to head in bowl games in the years since the ACC bogarted all their good teams:
Florida State 30, West Virginia 18
Boston College 37, North Carolina 24
Georgia Tech 51, Syracuse 14
Virginia Tech 35, Louisville 24
NC State 14, South Florida 0
Louisville 24, Wake Forest 13
West Virginia 38, Georgia Tech 35
Wake Forest 24, UConn 10
That's ACC 5, Big East 3. But! One of those three is Boston College. I checked, and they seem to have moved to the ACC. Rise of the Big East, indeed.
Third claim: FSU once ruled all, but there were challengers. There are no such challengers any more. Doyel presents Exhibits A, B, and C: UNC's two year run of going 21-3, GT's 10-2 season in '98, and Maryland's three-year record of 31-8. As if there haven't been similar seasons in the expansion era. We'll call VT the new conference hegemon, replacing FSU, so pretend I didn't mention their 42-11 record since joining. Wake Forest had an 11-3 season. Miami had a two-year 18-6 run. Boston College went 30-9 over a three-year span. So we can match this run for run.
The idea this all adds up to is supposedly that ACC football was very good football before and is lousy football now.
Wrong.
What did change? Perceptions. Why the perception change?
Florida State.
Florida State, upon joining, towered over the conference. From 1992 to 2000 they were conference champs or co-champs; from '92 to 2005 they failed to win only twice. They have multiple national championships in that time and played for several more. FSU was a machine. They are no longer. There is more parity in the ACC; expansion combined with Bobby Bowden's mummification has caused there to be two or three teams in the hunt each year rather than one massively dominant, love-to-hate-'em football machine. In fact it was partly the ACC's mediocrity which allowed this; there were other such machines around the NCAA, such as Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee, etc. Despite long runs as national title contenders, they don't have nearly the streak FSU does as conference champs; why? Because their conferences gave them more competition, obviously. Tennessee was 10-2 in 1996 and lost the SEC championship to national champ Florida. Michigan was 10-2 in 1999; the conference champ was Wisconsin. That never happened in the ACC; 10-2 was always good enough for a share the title, if any team could have reached it.
Florida State is no longer a machine. It has been replaced by good but flawed teams. The rest of the conference is the same as it ever was.
ACC football is as mediocre now as it was in the past. Only the perception has changed. The ACC's muddled middle (UVA, NC State, Maryland, GT, Clemson) has not gotten particularly better or worse. UVA is maybe a little better than before. Clemson is somewhat better. NC State and Maryland are somewhat worse. Whatever. These things rise and fall, but once you get past second place in the conference, only the names change; the quality does not.
Rather than bash the conference for the fall of Florida State, I celebrate this. It is not any more fun to watch Virginia Tech win a title than FSU, but the season in general is far better knowing there's no longer one dominant (and very unlikeable) team lording it over the the peons. Watching several good teams race to the top is much, much preferable to watching a bunch of mediocre ones race to second.
Continuing with a look at reactions from the ACC Football Kickoff, here is a column from Gregg Doyel at CBSSports.com:
Forget subtraction by addition, ACC troubles deeper
Doyel did not go to the Kickoff to give us fluff pieces on Clint Sintim and John Phillips. If you skim the article, the first thing you may notice is this: The first thing Doyel mentions is the free food, drinks, cigars, and golf to be had at the Kickoff. So we have a pretty good idea of what Doyel did go to the Kickoff for. Another thing he did not apparently do much of is talk to the players, except to glean a throwaway quote that he can mock after having bravely proven his point.
The premise of Doyel's article is that the ACC started to suck right around the time the conference expanded, only he goes on to say that it wasn't the fault of expansion. Fair enough; the expansion teams have filled 3 of the 6 slots in the ACC CG so far. Doyel does blame a number of factors, which I don't need to repeat verbatim as you can pretty easily read the article yourself.
He even gets a few things right. ACC quarterbacks do tend to stink. Georgia Tech fans suffered through four years of watching Reggie Ball ignore wide-open receivers (especially Calvin Johnson) in order to throw into double coverage. So they can attest.
Doyel also mentions the fall of Florida State as a factor. More on this later. Miami, too, hasn't been the stalwart they were supposed to be.
On the face of it, then, the premises appear sound. But the statistics and other claims fall apart under scrutiny.
First claim: In the four years before expansion, the ACC was 14-10 in bowl games. In the four years since, the ACC was 14-17. So there were seven "extra" bowls, and the ACC lost them all.
Here is the actual rundown. The records listed are: first, the ACC record before expansion (2000-2003) and second, after expansion: 2004-2007. These are the top four bowls the ACC plays in and they're the only ones the ACC has been affiliated with in all eight years.
BCS: 0-4, 1-3
Gator: 3-1, 2-2
Peach: 3-1, 1-3
C****s S****s: 2-2, 3-1
8-8 before, 7-9 after. A very, very slight decrease. This is not enough to proclaim the downfall of the ACC. That means in the remaining games, the ACC was 6-2, followed by 7-8 after expansion. This is significant. Only eight teams represented the ACC in not-these bowls before expansion; nearly twice that many after expansion. Two things: one, the ranks of the bowls have swelled considerable. Two, we're pretty obviously sending worse teams to bowls than before. As expansion grows the top of the league, the teams that were there and were always mediocre are being pushed to the bottom - but they get to keep going to bowls.
Second claim: The rise of the Big East. This is hysterically funny. The Big East has had a better bowl record than the ACC in the past four years; this is supposed to highlight the "fall" of the ACC. Except when you look at how they've fared head to head in bowl games in the years since the ACC bogarted all their good teams:
Florida State 30, West Virginia 18
Boston College 37, North Carolina 24
Georgia Tech 51, Syracuse 14
Virginia Tech 35, Louisville 24
NC State 14, South Florida 0
Louisville 24, Wake Forest 13
West Virginia 38, Georgia Tech 35
Wake Forest 24, UConn 10
That's ACC 5, Big East 3. But! One of those three is Boston College. I checked, and they seem to have moved to the ACC. Rise of the Big East, indeed.
Third claim: FSU once ruled all, but there were challengers. There are no such challengers any more. Doyel presents Exhibits A, B, and C: UNC's two year run of going 21-3, GT's 10-2 season in '98, and Maryland's three-year record of 31-8. As if there haven't been similar seasons in the expansion era. We'll call VT the new conference hegemon, replacing FSU, so pretend I didn't mention their 42-11 record since joining. Wake Forest had an 11-3 season. Miami had a two-year 18-6 run. Boston College went 30-9 over a three-year span. So we can match this run for run.
The idea this all adds up to is supposedly that ACC football was very good football before and is lousy football now.
Wrong.
What did change? Perceptions. Why the perception change?
Florida State.
Florida State, upon joining, towered over the conference. From 1992 to 2000 they were conference champs or co-champs; from '92 to 2005 they failed to win only twice. They have multiple national championships in that time and played for several more. FSU was a machine. They are no longer. There is more parity in the ACC; expansion combined with Bobby Bowden's mummification has caused there to be two or three teams in the hunt each year rather than one massively dominant, love-to-hate-'em football machine. In fact it was partly the ACC's mediocrity which allowed this; there were other such machines around the NCAA, such as Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee, etc. Despite long runs as national title contenders, they don't have nearly the streak FSU does as conference champs; why? Because their conferences gave them more competition, obviously. Tennessee was 10-2 in 1996 and lost the SEC championship to national champ Florida. Michigan was 10-2 in 1999; the conference champ was Wisconsin. That never happened in the ACC; 10-2 was always good enough for a share the title, if any team could have reached it.
Florida State is no longer a machine. It has been replaced by good but flawed teams. The rest of the conference is the same as it ever was.
ACC football is as mediocre now as it was in the past. Only the perception has changed. The ACC's muddled middle (UVA, NC State, Maryland, GT, Clemson) has not gotten particularly better or worse. UVA is maybe a little better than before. Clemson is somewhat better. NC State and Maryland are somewhat worse. Whatever. These things rise and fall, but once you get past second place in the conference, only the names change; the quality does not.
Rather than bash the conference for the fall of Florida State, I celebrate this. It is not any more fun to watch Virginia Tech win a title than FSU, but the season in general is far better knowing there's no longer one dominant (and very unlikeable) team lording it over the the peons. Watching several good teams race to the top is much, much preferable to watching a bunch of mediocre ones race to second.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
kibbles'n'bits'n'bits'n'bits
Here's an article. It's from the RTD, and I'm going to use a bunch of letters and words in this post telling you about it.
Bastaball. Jontel Evans is a basketball/football player from Hampton and a potential Cavalier. In need of a point guard (which Evans does rather well), Leitao has offered him a scholarship, and may even hear from him by the end of the month. But will he play football or basketball, O blogger? Evans himself is not yet sure. He's getting interest from some pretty good schools around the region, but has precious few offers. NC State is the only DI-A school to offer as a running back (link is like a month old but still perfectly up-to-date). Local I-AA schools have offered too. But Evans also has the offer in hand from UVA to play basketball, and, notably, Marquette.
Lacrosse. Yes, I'll be touching on this sport occasionally. I watched precisely two UVA lacrosse games this season. Up until May I lived in the state of Washington, in which UVA lacrosse does not garner high ratings. Hell, UVA football does not garner high ratings. (It's all Huskies this and Apple Cup that.)
Even without the sharply trained eye of even a casual viewer, I could tell one thing: god did we suck at faceoffs. Somewhere in the middle of the UMBC playoff game I began dreading them. Maryland slaughtered us in this department - against them we were 28-of-65 last season, including 3 of 12 in that awful first half in the playoff game. The RTD article you were supposed to click on up there offers hope in the form of a guy who is mediocre at them. Chad Gaudet will join the UVA team for one year after finishing his undergrad degree at Dartmouth, and brings with him a faceoff record that includes 11-for-21 against us. For the record, we were almost exactly .500 on faceoffs last year, but that's inflated somewhat by being much better than crummy teams like VMI and Vermont. Against the big dogs, we stunk.
Ryan Benincasa is the other nugget of hope from the article. Here the Greenwich Post of Greenwich, CT has things to say about him. To summarize: Benincasa's Greenwich High beat Darien High, the lacrosse power in the state of Connecticut sometime in May, and Benincasa was 11-of-18 on faceoffs and scored at least two goals.
Foobow. Meet the Team Day is on August 10 starting at 2 PM. So that should be fun. Also, in case you've been ignoring:
- Every other newspaper in the state of Virginia
- About 10 different threads at TheSabre
- www.virginiasports.com
- This blog
Retro day is against Richmond and the 1989 team will be honored etc. etc. etc. Good scoop, Richmond Times-Dispatch! Good scoop.
Bastaball. Jontel Evans is a basketball/football player from Hampton and a potential Cavalier. In need of a point guard (which Evans does rather well), Leitao has offered him a scholarship, and may even hear from him by the end of the month. But will he play football or basketball, O blogger? Evans himself is not yet sure. He's getting interest from some pretty good schools around the region, but has precious few offers. NC State is the only DI-A school to offer as a running back (link is like a month old but still perfectly up-to-date). Local I-AA schools have offered too. But Evans also has the offer in hand from UVA to play basketball, and, notably, Marquette.
Lacrosse. Yes, I'll be touching on this sport occasionally. I watched precisely two UVA lacrosse games this season. Up until May I lived in the state of Washington, in which UVA lacrosse does not garner high ratings. Hell, UVA football does not garner high ratings. (It's all Huskies this and Apple Cup that.)
Even without the sharply trained eye of even a casual viewer, I could tell one thing: god did we suck at faceoffs. Somewhere in the middle of the UMBC playoff game I began dreading them. Maryland slaughtered us in this department - against them we were 28-of-65 last season, including 3 of 12 in that awful first half in the playoff game. The RTD article you were supposed to click on up there offers hope in the form of a guy who is mediocre at them. Chad Gaudet will join the UVA team for one year after finishing his undergrad degree at Dartmouth, and brings with him a faceoff record that includes 11-for-21 against us. For the record, we were almost exactly .500 on faceoffs last year, but that's inflated somewhat by being much better than crummy teams like VMI and Vermont. Against the big dogs, we stunk.
Ryan Benincasa is the other nugget of hope from the article. Here the Greenwich Post of Greenwich, CT has things to say about him. To summarize: Benincasa's Greenwich High beat Darien High, the lacrosse power in the state of Connecticut sometime in May, and Benincasa was 11-of-18 on faceoffs and scored at least two goals.
Foobow. Meet the Team Day is on August 10 starting at 2 PM. So that should be fun. Also, in case you've been ignoring:
- Every other newspaper in the state of Virginia
- About 10 different threads at TheSabre
- www.virginiasports.com
- This blog
Retro day is against Richmond and the 1989 team will be honored etc. etc. etc. Good scoop, Richmond Times-Dispatch! Good scoop.
Friday, July 11, 2008
the wayback machine
The football team has got themselves one, and they're dialing up 1989. OK, the stated purpose is to celebrate the years from 1984-1993, but they're honoring the 1989 ACC championship team and selling tickets at 1989 prices. So think Like A Prayer. Think Milli Vanilli. Actually, don't. That's some bad music right there and we're not even up to the New Kids on the Block era yet.
What's this mean?
- One, the team is probably having trouble getting people out to the Richmond game. Jeez, lemme see, I can go to the USC game which is the week before, or I can go to the Maryland game (the next home game) and throw donuts at Fatty the Coach, or I can go watch the part of the schedule In Which A Respectable Team Emulates One From The SEC and drops half a division to I-AA for a week. (If we were Florida State? Two weeks.) Tough choice there. Thus, $16 tickets.
- Two, orange uniforms! The team will be wearing the orange jerseys, white pants, and weirdly-two-striped white helmet of the day.
- On the plus side, Astroturf will not be part of the show.
The one distinctly non-1989 aspect of the game: the opponent. No, we didn't play Richmond in 1989. Nor in 1988, or 1990.....in fact this will be the first time Richmond ever sees the two-stripe helmet. The era we're throwing back to? Never played Richmond in that time.
Heather Dinich at ESPN has been blogging her little hands off today, and here are the results. Actually, lemme rephrase that. Heather Dinich has spent all day writing bits and pieces of columns. Sorry, when you write for a major outlet like ESPN, you don't "blog", you "go to work, type some stuff, send to the editor, and go home." The plus side is you get money and health benefits for doing that, and you get to eliminate the part of the sports journalism gig that's actually tricky, like interviewing a coach who is a man and is 40. The downside is, um.....huh.
Well anyway, here's what she had to say on the subject of your Virginia Cavaliers:
Under "Toughest Stadiums in the ACC":
Thats: 61,500, Ms. Dinich. I didn't think "gorgeous" and "favorite fall road trips" are what people look for in a tough place to play. And given that UNC's Kenan (Ivory Wayans) Stadium made #4 on the list with its "picturesque pine trees" I can't help but wonder which criteria Heather was using. Tough to play at Kenan? Have you noticed who you actually play when you get there?
Under "ACC in the 2009 NFL draft":
Under "ACC position rankings: Quarterbacks":
I wish I could argue, but Lalich needs to show a little something first.
What's this mean?
- One, the team is probably having trouble getting people out to the Richmond game. Jeez, lemme see, I can go to the USC game which is the week before, or I can go to the Maryland game (the next home game) and throw donuts at Fatty the Coach, or I can go watch the part of the schedule In Which A Respectable Team Emulates One From The SEC and drops half a division to I-AA for a week. (If we were Florida State? Two weeks.) Tough choice there. Thus, $16 tickets.
- Two, orange uniforms! The team will be wearing the orange jerseys, white pants, and weirdly-two-striped white helmet of the day.
- On the plus side, Astroturf will not be part of the show.
The one distinctly non-1989 aspect of the game: the opponent. No, we didn't play Richmond in 1989. Nor in 1988, or 1990.....in fact this will be the first time Richmond ever sees the two-stripe helmet. The era we're throwing back to? Never played Richmond in that time.
Heather Dinich at ESPN has been blogging her little hands off today, and here are the results. Actually, lemme rephrase that. Heather Dinich has spent all day writing bits and pieces of columns. Sorry, when you write for a major outlet like ESPN, you don't "blog", you "go to work, type some stuff, send to the editor, and go home." The plus side is you get money and health benefits for doing that, and you get to eliminate the part of the sports journalism gig that's actually tricky, like interviewing a coach who is a man and is 40. The downside is, um.....huh.
Well anyway, here's what she had to say on the subject of your Virginia Cavaliers:
Under "Toughest Stadiums in the ACC":
6. Virginia, Scott Stadium (51,500) -- Despite the open press box (which I always seem to forget on the coldest of Saturdays), this place is gorgeous. The columns on the hill and the architecture make this one of my favorite fall road trips.
Thats: 61,500, Ms. Dinich. I didn't think "gorgeous" and "favorite fall road trips" are what people look for in a tough place to play. And given that UNC's Kenan (Ivory Wayans) Stadium made #4 on the list with its "picturesque pine trees" I can't help but wonder which criteria Heather was using. Tough to play at Kenan? Have you noticed who you actually play when you get there?
Under "ACC in the 2009 NFL draft":
1. Eugene Monroe, OT, Virginia: This hulking 315-pound left tackle might be the best offensive lineman in the ACC and should be a first-round pick.
Under "ACC position rankings: Quarterbacks":
10. Peter Lalich, Virginia: These last three are a toss-up, really. Who knows if these guys will even wind up being the starters? Lalich, you would think, has the edge because he played in eight games and threw the ball 61 times.
I wish I could argue, but Lalich needs to show a little something first.
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