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 The Alabama Crimson Tide came in as heavy underdogs against the #9 ranked Clemson Tigers but surprised everyone by dominating the game from start to finish.
AP:
Nick Saban may face his toughest task yet: Holding down runaway expectations for his inexperienced Alabama team. Crimson Tide’s $4 million-per-year coach gave Alabama backers a reason to think big Saturday night, leading ‘Bama to a thorough 34-10 beating of No. 9 Clemson 34-10 at the Georgia Dome.
“Nobody can be satisfied with a one-game performance,” Saban said. “This will be a challenge for our team and it’ll be interesting to see how they respond.”
Still, as the Alabama band broke into Queen’s “We Are The Champions,” at the end, you had to wonder if they were honoring the Crimson Tide’s past, with 12 national titles and years of dominance in the Southeastern Conference under Bear Bryant, or gazing into the near future.
“It’s still early. We still got a long way to go,” cautioned quarterback John Parker Wilson, who threw for two touchdowns and ran for a third. “But we’ve got a good group of guys here who can do it.”
The statistical comparison was overwhelming:
| Team Stat Comparison |
|
 |
 |
| 1st Downs |
25 |
11 |
| Total Yards |
419 |
188 |
| Passing |
180 |
188 |
| Rushing |
239 |
0 |
| Penalties |
6-40 |
6-43 |
| 3rd Down Conversions |
11-17 |
1-9 |
| 4th Down Conversions |
0-0 |
1-2 |
| Turnovers |
0 |
2 |
| Possession |
41:13 |
18:47 |
It’s worth pointing out that Clemson’s vaunted offense was held to a measly field goal, with 7 of the 10 Tiger points coming on a kickoff return.
ESPN’s Ivan Maisel thinks Alabama is ahead of schedule after a disappointing first year for head coach Nick Saban:
Alabama coach Nick Saban wanted to play No. 9 Clemson in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic for a lot of reasons. He wanted the national prime-time exposure of the opening Saturday night. He wanted his No. 24 Crimson Tide to have a presence in this recruiting hotbed. He wanted his young team — 14 freshmen on the two-deep — to play in a bowl-like atmosphere.
Saban, in sum, wanted this game in order to prepare his team for a future when they would be ready to contend for championships. In the wake of Alabama’s 34-10 victory, that may have been Saban’s only miscalculation.
Future? The future is now. If Alabama continues to play as well as it played Saturday night, the Crimson Tide will play in the Georgia Dome again this season — in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game.
It’s an exciting start to the season. Clearly, Saban has done wonders in recruiting. But Alabama faces an absolutely brutal schedule, playing at Arkansas, at #1 Georgia, at #18 Tennessee, at #7 LSU, and closing the regular season at home against #10 Auburn. If they can even win three of those games, it would be a spectacular year. Even that, though, wouldn’t be enough to guarantee them a spot in the SEC title game, let alone the BCS championship game.
 John Mark Stallings, the son of former Alabama head football coach Gene Stallings, died Saturday morningat the age of 46. Gentry Estes of the Mobile Press-Register notes that, “He suffered from Down syndrome, and became an unforgettable part of the Crimson Tide’s football family during his dad’s successful tenure in the 1990s.”
Mal Moore, Alabama’s athletics director, issued a statement on behalf of the ‘Bama family:
“I’ve known John Mark Stallings his entire life,” Moore said. “I want to extend my deepest sympathy to Coach Stallings, Ruth Ann and the entire Stallings family. For someone who never played or coached a game, I think John Mark may have touched more Alabama fans than any other person ever did. I would like to thank the Stallings family for sharing their love for John Mark with all of us.”
John Mark was indeed a fixture at the Capstone during his dad’s too-short tenure there. He’ll be missed and all of Bama Nation’s hearts go out to the Stallings family.
Mike Souchak won 15 tour events in a career that lasted over a decade. He was an accomplished college football player and shot the lowest score ever in PGA history for 72 holes at the 1955 Texas Open. That record stood for over four decades. RIP.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP)—Former PGA Tour professional and Duke Sports Hall of Fame member Mike Souchak has died.
The school said the 81-year-old died Thursday in Belleair, Fla.
Souchak won 15 events on the PGA Tour from 1955-66 and had 11 top-10 finishes in major championships. He finished third at the U.S. Open in 1959 and 1960, and played on the winning U.S. Ryder Cup teams in ‘59 and ‘61.
He set a tour record for four-round low score at the 1955 Texas Open, opening with a 60 and finishing a 257. That record stood until Mark Calcavecchia’s 256 at the 2001 Phoenix Open.
At Duke, Souchak lettered three seasons in football and four in golf, helping the Blue Devils win two Southern Conference golf titles.
Louisville sued Duke for pulling out of a four game football contract after only one game and demanded $450,000 in damages. Duke claimed that, because their team is so bad (13-90 since 1999) any Division I team would meet the contract’s “team of similar stature” clause.
Judge Phillip J. Shepherd of the Franklin County (Ky.) Circuit Court agreed, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“At oral argument, Duke [with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty] persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower,” Shepherd wrote in a summary judgment issued Thursday, according to the paper. “Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”
You almost hate to win with that kind of argument.
The University of Florida quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner sure does interesting things when away from school.
During spring break, Tebow added a new facet to his fame. In an impoverished village outside General Santos City in the Philippines, Tebow helped circumcise impoverished children.
On the Friday of a weeklong trip to the orphanage his father’s ministry runs in Southeast Asia, Tebow assisted with the care of locals who had walked miles to the temporary clinic that the ministry helped organize. More than 250 people underwent medical and dental procedures, some of them from “Dr. Tebow,” who has no formal surgical training.
“The first time, it was nerve-racking,” he said. “Hands were shaking a little bit. I mean, I’m cutting somebody. You can’t do those kinds of things in the United States. But those people really needed the surgeries. We needed to help them.”
Tebow didn’t plan on operating that day in the Philippines — his job was to preach to the hundreds of people before they had teeth pulled or cysts removed. But as the day rolled on, he grew curious about the three Filipino doctors and his friend, UF graduate and aspiring doctor Richard “R.B.” Moleno, in the bus-sized vehicle that served as a mobile hospital.
Tebow started as a helper and gofer, holding tools and running errands for the medics. By afternoon, he was asking questions and looking for more active ways to help. And by the end of an exhausting day, he was wearing gloves and a mask, wielding surgical scissors, finishing off stitches with a snip.
The patients were too young to ask Tebow his medical background. What would the parents say if they knew about his other sideline, pardon the pun? Free medical care is free medical care I guess.
Three Members of Congress are claiming that the NCAA Bowl Championship Series is illegal and demanding a playoff.
Forget government corruption or corporate fraud. Three members of Congress want the Justice Department to investigate whether college football’s Bowl Championship Series is an illegal enterprise.
Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are introducing a resolution rejecting the oft-criticized bowl system as an illegal restriction on trade because only the largest universities compete in most of the major bowl games. The resolution would require Justice’s antitrust division to investigate whether the system violates federal law.
The measure also would put Congress on record as supporting a college football playoff.
“Who elected these NCAA people? Who are they to decide who competes for the championship?” Abercrombie said at a press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, gripping a souvenir University of Hawaii football.
Now, granted, these are just three comparatively minor Members and this will likely go nowhere. Still, this is asinine. As Sean Hackbarth points out, Congress has more important matters on its plate.
Moreover, the answer to “Who elected these NCAA people?” is the presidents of its constituent universities. Who better to decide how college sports should be governed than the leaders of the colleges? Surely, not a group of people with demonstrably no business sense.
Personally, I’d prefer a playoff to the current system. But that’s a matter for the colleges to decide, with some pressure from the market. It’s certainly not within the legitimate purview of the legislature.
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It was broom and dustpan time in Gainesville last Friday.
The Gators’ 2006 BCS National Championship trophy fell off of its stand in Florida’s football offices and broke Friday, Florida’s operations and facilities director Chip Howard said Monday.
Because Florida is preparing to move to its new offices, which are expected to be completed in July, Howard said the trophy was in a temporary location in an open area of one of the stadium’s sky boxes.
“It was on a coffee table, and it was inadvertently bumped,” Howard said. “It doesn’t take much for the top of it to fall off.”
The trophy was insured for $8,000, and the university has already put in an order to replace it. Howard said it should take about 90 days for the new Waterford crystal trophy to reach Gainesville.
At least it was insured. Note also, the trophy was on a coffee table. Was someone using it to store mints?
Players and coaches are telling entirely different stories as to how Ereck Plancher died last month. From the Orlando Sentinel-
Ereck Plancher, a 19-year-old receiver from Naples, was taken to a hospital March 18 and was pronounced dead about an hour after the workout, known as a “mat drill.”
A preliminary autopsy was inconclusive. Further tests are under way to determine the cause of Plancher’s death.
The UCF players, who asked for anonymity because they fear retribution from football coaches, said Plancher’s final practice was more intense than the basic-conditioning workout described by UCF officials.
Students on scholarship have a great deal to lose by speaking up. Whereas government officials want annonymity for a myriad of reasons when they leak which is often done for their egos, I’m more inclined to believe these students.
In an interview with the Sentinel, UCF coach George O’Leary and his football staff disputed the four players’ account of Plancher’s final practice.
“I did not see him struggle on the field,” O’Leary said of the morning Plancher died. “From my professional opinion, what should have been done for his care was being done.”
O’Leary’s professional opinion included puffing up his resume which when discovered caused him to resign as head coach of Notre Dame. This coach has lied when its suited his purposes in the past. Is he lying now?
The next part of the article is interesting.
The players said they decided to talk to Sentinel reporters because they were upset about the school’s portrayal of a “10-minute, 26-second” workout that included a “weights component” described by UCF Athletic Director Keith Tribble in a news conference the afternoon of Plancher’s death. UCF Executive Associate Athletic Director David Chambers a week later clarified Tribble’s statement, saying the workout lasted about 20 minutes. UCF spokesman Grant Heston said Thursday that officials were relaying what they thought was accurate information.
“We were acting on the best information we had available in the hours immediately after Ereck’s death,” Heston said. “Subsequently, we learned that the workout was lengthier than we originally believed.”
The school is backtracking already. UCF coaches had to know what drills were conducted. How or why misleading information was given out, I think we all can take a guess at that.
I’m putting the rest of the Sentinel article beneath the fold. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. George O’Leary may soon be out of work again. UCF gave this disgraced coach a second chance. If O”Leary is found to be lying, he should be fired. Football isn’t worth dying for.
Players said the March 18 workout included:
*Multiple agility work stations that lasted five minutes each.
*Two runs on a 200-yard obstacle course.
*Two timed sprints from sideline to sideline.
They said those drills, conducted in the Knights’ indoor fieldhouse, came after players lifted weights for an hour, also a supervised activity.
“Everybody was struggling at times,” one player said. “. . . But he [Ereck] was running, and I could tell something wasn’t right. His eyes got real dark, and he was squinting like he was blinded by the sun. He was making this moaning noise, trying to breathe real hard.”
The four players said Plancher fell during the final sprint and members of the UCF coaching staff yelled at him to finish the drill.
“Ereck took off running about 5 yards and fell; the coaches were yelling at him to get up, and of course he came in last,” one player said.
O’Leary said he didn’t see Plancher fall but did see him get up during one of the two runs.
Offensive coordinator Tim Salem said he saw no signs that Plancher was having problems during the workout.
“When he was coming through my station, he actually was passing people. He was not struggling at that time. He was working harder than other kids.”
After the workout, the team huddled in the middle of the field, where O’Leary singled out Plancher and cursed at him for lack of effort during the final sprint, the four players said.
All four players recall that O’Leary said to Plancher, “That’s a bunch of [expletive] out of you, son,” in the huddle. O’Leary denied cursing at Plancher but recalled telling people around him, “He’s better than that.”
“Ereck was in the back when O’Leary was yelling at him, but Ereck couldn’t even look at him,” one of the players said. “He was trying to catch his breath the whole time, and he never could.”
Plancher was noticeably woozy and staggering as he tried to participate in the final jumping-jacks drill, the players said. The team finished those exercises, then huddled one final time. Plancher collapsed while walking away from the huddle, the players said.
Salem confirmed that the post-weightlifting workout involved mat drills, a series of strenuous agility drills that are considered to be among the most difficult football conditioning drills.
The four players interviewed by the Sentinel said several players vomited during the workout.
“It wasn’t just Ereck that was hurting. It was six or seven other people,” one of the players said.
The players said they did not see Plancher vomit. O’Leary said he only saw one player vomit, and that player “throws up all the time.”
O’Leary reiterated his March 20 comment that the workout was not taxing.
“I always look at the kids, at their sweat,” he said. “They had little rings of sweat around their neck and a little under their armpits. That’s how I just know whether it was a taxing workout.”
One of the four players who spoke with the Sentinel, a veteran, disagreed, saying: “It was the toughest workout since I’ve been here. It definitely was not a light workout.”
O’Leary said that when the players got to the huddle after the drills, “I told them what time practice was tomorrow. I talked about academics. I basically said what the dress was for the next day. Then players went for their cool-down and jumping jacks.”
O’Leary said he broke the huddle, and “the next thing I saw, I turned, I saw the trainer with Ereck. Robert Jackson was the trainer there. I went over, and Ereck was just taking a knee. I asked, ‘Did you have breakfast?’ ”
Plancher “was already not responding,” said one player who participated in the workout.
O’Leary said the trainer and the receivers coach were trying to give Plancher water. Players carried Plancher outside and waited for an ambulance to arrive while UCF athletic trainers began rescue breathing and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, called 911 and attached an automated external defibrillator.
UCF police officers arrived at 10:52 a.m. to find Plancher unconscious and lying on a bench. Plancher was taken to Florida Hospital East and pronounced dead at 11:51 a.m.
Chris Metzger, Plancher’s football coach at Lely High in Naples, said Plancher told him in late March or early April of 2007 that he collapsed during a workout at UCF. Several of Plancher’s relatives and friends also said the player told them he collapsed during a UCF workout.
“He told me he was having a hard time with the workouts and had even passed out once,” Metzger said. “That was unusual for him because he was in great shape. I asked him if the team had checked him out, and he said they did. He said they told him everything was fine, so I told him to keep working at it and everything would be OK.”
Ereck’s father, Enock, said he had never heard of his son having health problems at UCF.
“He was in perfect health,” Enock Plancher said. “He never even got sick or had a cold.”
Ereck’s mother declined to talk to reporters.
UCF officials said they have no knowledge of Plancher, a freshman who was 5 feet 10 inches and 180 pounds, having any medical problems. Officials said there was a note in Plancher’s medical file about him needing liquids during a summer workout in 2007.
Tribble said March 18 that Plancher passed an NCAA-mandated physical. Coaches and team trainers later said Plancher had a spotless medical record.
“We have no record of Ereck requiring any medical attention . . . while at UCF,” Tribble said in a statement.
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He was an all SEC QB in the mid-fifties. Quarterbacks who also doubled as punters were quite common when I watched football in the 70’s and 80’s. Dallas Cowboy Danny White, Tom Blanchard who kicked for the Giants, Bucs, and Saints. There were others, including Sammy Baugh back in the 40’s who was one of the leading punters in the NFL. Former NFL QB Dan Marino punted for Pitt his freshman year at the school. Once I remember a local television reporter making fun of a youth who made mention of Marino kicking. The boy was wrong, but the reporter was ignorant too. Marino was the Dolphins emergency punter.
Back to Day, he spent 12 years in the CFL and is fondly remembered by Ole Miss Football fans. RIP.
OXFORD, Miss. — Eagle Day, a quarterback at Mississippi in the 1950s whose first college pass went for a 63-yard touchdown, died. He was 75.
Herman Sidney Day died Friday at his daughter’s home in Nashville, Tenn., after a short unspecified illness, the university said.
He played two seasons with the Washington Redskins as a punter. Day spent 12 seasons in the Canadian Football League, where he was All-Pro in 1961 and 1962.
Day was an all-Southeastern Conference quarterback who went 28-5-1 and won two league titles under coach John Vaught from 1954-56.
He was dubbed “The Mississippi Gambler” after setting up Ole Miss’ 14-13 victory over TCU in the 1956 Cotton Bowl with a 25-yard scramble late in the game that helped the Rebels earn their first major bowl victory.
Day also pitched for the Rebels baseball team and took Ole Miss to the College World Series in 1956. He was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, the Ole Miss Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame in 2003.
Survivors include wife JoAnne, two sons, a daughter and two grandchildren.
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Dennis Pillion dubs them “Alabama’s $4 million recruiting class,” an allusion to Nick Saban’s handsome salary.
“Ahhh. That’s more like it.” - The Alabama fan base.
For about 14 months now, Crimson Tide fans have rejoiced in the hiring and arrival of Nick Saban as their head coach as if someone had found a way to reincarnate Bear Bryant. And why not?
After all, this wasn’t just a football program with more money than God buying itself a high-profile football coach. This was restoring order to the universe, righting old wrongs (Auburn winning six straight Iron Bowls, no National Championships for Alabama in 15 years). This was Andy Dufresne escaping from Shawshank Prison, only as the Tide fans stood rejoicing in the downpour with outstretched arms, outsiders were lining up to point and laugh.
[...]
 And then Wednesday rolled around. Signing Day. Julio Jones day. And around 11:30 a.m. Jones committed to the Tide. At 2 p.m. Gadsden City linebacker Jerrell Harris pulled an Andre Smith and donned a Houndstooth hat at his signing day press conference.
That’s when it started dawning on people how good this class really is. Alabama had long had verbal commitments from stud prospects like Vigor’s Burton Scott, Mountain Brook offensive lineman Tyler Love, Mark Barron of St. Paul’s, Melvin Ray, Courtney Upshaw, Michael Williams. Then came commitments from Star Jackson, Devonta Bolton, Chris Jordan, Donta Hightower, Barrett Jones, Alonzo Lawrence, Mark Ingram, Glenn Harbin. Saban locked up top prospects early and often, as is his habit, and when the last round of blue chippers - Jones, Harris, Marcel Dareus - said they wanted to be part of the class that returned the Crimson Tide to its glory days, the total body of work was outstanding.
It’s not just the few individual talent that makes this class special. The depth is truly overwhelming. Guys like Ray or Upshaw would have been the crown jewels in previous classes, but this year rivals.com gave higher rankings to eight Alabama signees. The Crimson Tide hauled in a ridiculous 19 four-star prospects by rivals. Last year, with only a month on the job, Saban signed 10 four-stars. In the four recruiting classes before that combined, Alabama signed 23 four-star prospects, and that includes guys like Mike Ford, Marcus Udell, and Chris Felder who never enrolled. This year’s class may have to ask players to greyshirt because too many of them are in good shape academically.
Even if you look past the fact that Alabama is bringing in nearly as many four-star and higher players this fall as it has in a four year span from 2002-2006, there are plenty of reasons to be fired up about the future in Tuscaloosa. In addition to being the most talented class Alabama’s had since services like rivals.com and scout.com started tracking such things, the 2008 group is by far the most versatile.
Players like Scott, Williams, Barron, Bolton, Kerry Murphy, and Chris Jordan could contribute just as easily on offense or defense. In fact, we likely won’t know until fall practice where some of these players will line up. Figuring out where to play your freakishly athletic horses is always a better problem than scratching your head wondering who in the world could play outside linebacker for you.
Oh, and just one more thing for the fans of other schools. The fact that Alabama signed so many top-notch prep prospects means that other schools did not. Auburn coaches and fans are busy claiming that the Tigers got who they wanted, that star rankings don’t mean anything, etc. Which I suppose is the only thing a coach or a fanbase can say when they’ve been completely owned. Auburn offered scholarships to 15 players that ended up signing with Alabama. No player offered by Alabama signed with Auburn. Tell me again fans, which school “got the players they wanted?”
[...]
But as a whole, teams that sign top classes win a lot more games than teams that don’t, and the 2008 Alabama team will be a whole lot more talented than the 2007 one. The scary part will be if Saban can continue to be as successful at recruiting in future classes as he was in this one. Then the Tide really will be back on top.
It’s about time.
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