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| Saturday, April 28, 2007 |
The Miami Dolphins have surprised everyone in the room and the television studios by reaching for wide receiver/kick returner Ted Ginn, Jr. from Ohio State.
What the Experts Say:
Scout.com Profile:
Player Evaluation: A track and field sprinter who translates his natural speed onto the football field, Ginn is a vertical receiver who loosens up the defense. Must get stronger yet a game-breaking threat every time he steps onto the field.
STRENGTHS: Downfield Threat, Elusiveness with Catch, Speed
 AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT: Blocking Ability, Size, Strength
Biography: Three-year starter and All-Conference selection as a junior after posting receiving numbers of 59/781/9 while averaging 11.1 yards on 24 punt returns and 24.4 yards on 18 kick returns with one touchdown on each. Sophomore receiving totals were 51/803/4. Returned two punts and another pair of kicks for scores as a freshman.
Pos: Game-breaking skill player with home-run speed. Quick releasing off the line, has opponents playing back on their heels, and consistently stretches the field. Possesses a terrific burst of speed and runs to daylight if given the slightest space of open room. Fast laterally and makes the reception in stride. Effortlessly makes the difficult reception downfield running full-tilt.
Neg: Not big, and beaten out in physical battles. Easily brought down at the initial point of attack. Has trouble handling the jam.
BILL JEMPTY UPDATE: Pass me the smelling salts. Ted Ginn? Is Miami nuts? The team needs OL help, DL help, QB help, TE help, DB help, and they have Chris Chambers and Marty Booker at WR already. Booker isn’t a favorite of mine and Wes Welker is gone but still Ginn? This guy could be the next Johnny Lam Jones. He’s a stretch at #9. We won’t know the outcome on this pick for a while, but I’m betting Miami does not get the production worth this high a pick.
Miami’s #1 last year hasn’t panned out yet and oh I just love the picture James has up of Ginn. A football player on crutches, anyone remember what happened to a Dolphin #1 pick named Randall Hill? Hill was also a WR that Miami drafted in 1991. Ginn on crutches reminds me of the Hill debacle.
2nd Update- Houston takes Okoye, who I wrote just minutes before their pick that the Dolphins should this player. Miami could have had him. Sheesh!
UPDATE Scouts.inc:
Can you say curveball? Let’s start with the good because it’s easier to get out of the way. Ginn Jr. is a playmaker with blazing speed. He can go the distance every time he touches the ball whether it’s on returns or catching the ball on offense. And the truth is the Dolphins need help at receiver and in the return game with Wes Welker now with New Englans. Now let’s get to the bad. First off, passing on Quinn was a huge mistake. Even if Miami is going to trade for Trent Green, he is a dinosaur by NFL standards and there are obviously concerns about his ability to stay healthy.
Bringing in Quinn as an insurance policy and an outstanding heir apparent would have been the right move. Secondly, there are no guarantees Ginn Jr. will develop into a quality No. 2 receiver. While he has excellent speed, he ran just three routes at Ohio State so he has a tremendous amount of work to do in that area.
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The Florida Masochist linked with Miami Dolphins draft Ted Ginn...
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| Sunday, April 1, 2007 |
The Florida Gators beat the Ohio State Buckeyes for this year’s (mythical) college football championship. Now, those two teams meet in the real NCAA basketball finals.
Now we’ll see who’s really No. 1.
Florida, the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament, and Ohio State, which finished the regular season as the top-ranked team, rolled into Monday night’s championship game.
After a tournament filled with nail-biters, Saturday night’s games were downright pedestrian. Ohio State (35-3) beat Georgetown 67-60 despite more foul trouble from Greg Oden. Florida (34-5) romped to a 76-66 victory over UCLA in a rematch of last year’s title game that wasn’t any closer than the original.
It will be a title game rematch of sorts. The Buckeyes and Gators met for a title in January — only it was on grass, not hardwood. The gridiron Gators won that one in an upset, beating Ohio State 41-14 and making Florida the first school to hold titles in football and men’s basketball at the same time. Now Florida is looking to add to its title collection. But the Buckeyes might want a little revenge for their football brethren. Yes, that was Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel sitting in the front row Saturday night with his Florida counterpart Urban Meyer across the way.
Florida is trying to become the first team since Duke in 1992 to repeat, and the first ever to do it with the same starting lineup.
Winning the big two college titles in the same year would be unprecedented and quite amazing, indeed.
It looks as if the NCAA may be moving away from the baggy shorts and oversized jerseys to a skin tight top and what appears to be a skirt or some kind of kilt. Of course the uniform is supposedly built like the “tattoo culture” where everyone has the same uniform but you can customize it to be unique.
Starting tomorrow night, four top schools—Arizona, Florida, Ohio State, and Syracuse—will don Nike’s System of Dress, a radical new look that brings Raf Simons–style proportion-play to the hard court. Complementing the aforementioned shorts are formfitting jerseys ten inches smaller in the torso, resulting in a second-skin look that’s more Bode Miller than Ben Wallace. Players will also be able to customize their uniforms by adding options like padded shorts (to protect against the errant knee or elbow) and Dwyane Wade–style leg wraps.
As for me, well I won’t be rushing out to buy my own version with my own personal pieces of flair. The idea that you want every player to be able to make themselves different from their teammates strikes me as counter to the idea of a team all together.
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| Tuesday, January 9, 2007 |
Rick Gosselin, the Dallas Morning News’ Hall of Fame sportswriter, explains why it’s so much better to be a coach in a big-time college program than in the NFL:
I think Nick Saban suffered from Steve Spurrier Syndrome. Winning in the NFL isn’t as easy as a great college coach may think, so it’s back to campus life where you can coast at 9-2 in an off year. For that reason, Pete Carroll and Charlie Weis should never leave the college game. They have better jobs right now at Southern Cal and Notre Dame, respectively, than what they can find in the NFL.
Michigan, Ohio State and Texas are also better head-coaching positions than any you’d find in the NFL. The Cowboys are about as marquee a franchise as there is in the NFL – and they’ve run through four coaches since winning their last Super Bowl in 1995. And a fifth coach could be on the way. Green Bay? Four since their last Super Bowl in 1996. New York Giants? Four since their last Super Bowl in 1990. Washington? Six since winning their last Super Bowl in 1991. Oakland? The Raiders are soon to be on their fourth coach since appearing in their last Super Bowl in 2002.
Stability wins in coaching. You can find it in college. You rarely find it in the NFL.
Indeed. The Raiders’ stat is the scariest: They went to the Super Bowl in five years ago. That coach was fired the very next year. Then his successor got fired. Then his. Then his. That’s just staggering.
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| Tuesday, January 9, 2007 |
AP sportswriter Ben Walker penned this lede to his piece on last night’s BCS Championship game in which the Florida Gators whooped the Ohio State Buckeyes:
Turns out Florida was too good to be on the same field as Ohio State, and that Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith and the Buckeyes were the ones who weren’t worthy after all.
Coach Urban Meyer’s once-beaten Gators dominated the undefeated No. 1 Buckeyes and streaked to college football’s national championship, 41-14 on Monday night.
“Honestly, we’ve played a lot better teams than them,” Florida defensive end Jarvis Moss said. “I could name four or five teams in the SEC that could probably compete with them and play the same type of game we did against them.”
Honestly, I think that’s right. That’s why the simple counting of wins and losses is a silly way to pick national title contenders in Division I. The idea that Boise State, which played a schedule filled with teams that probably couldn’t beat Florida’s high school championship team, is better than teams with even three or four losses in the SEC or ACC, is a joke. LSU, Auburn, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee probably all could have beaten Ohio State last night.
Of course, that’s why we need a playoff system rather than a beauty contest.
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| Tuesday, January 9, 2007 |
Hotline On Call observes that “no amount of cash today can match the exposure John McCain received tonight during the coin toss of the BCS nat’l title game between the two biggest schools in the two most important states in presidential campaign lore. The referee made a point to make sure that the players from swing states Florida and Ohio State were personally introduced to McCain.”
Doug Haller, Jason P. Skoda, Jeff Metcalfe, Richard Obert of the Arizona Republic have a different view: “The potential 2008 presidential candidate flipped the coin. Florida won the toss. And McCain lost Ohio in the future election. Yes, it happened that fast.”
OTB
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| Tuesday, January 9, 2007 |
Heralded by many, in Idaho, as the true National Champions, the Boise State Broncos closed the 2006 College Football season as the only undefeated team. Florida, by virtue of their thrashing of Ohio State, is the National Champion. And the Broncos? Fifth in the AP. Sixth in the USA Today Coaches poll. Not exactly the treatment befitting an undefeated team, who will be remembered best for their thrilling victory in the Fiesta Bowl – a game already declared an instant classic.
Boise State however will not be accorded any more respect than they won on the gridiron. They are the other – an interloper at the big BCS bash. And in spite of their undefeated record, the exciting style of football they play and the prominence their situation has received, they are not welcome to clamor that they were denied their rightful place atop the College Football heap. Their National Title hopes denied not because they lost, but because they play in a smaller conference, in a smaller market and They are not a glamour team like USC, Texas, Ohio State or Florida.
Lots of folks will be writing and scribbling in the coming weeks what needs to be done to fix the BCS. Many of those folks perpetuate the ridiculous system for picking a Champion. And pay careful attention to that word. Championships are not won on the field, they are picked by voters, whether ink-stained scribes or clipboard cr5acking coaches, and then parsed by a computer.
The writers and coaches both pay more fealty to the polls than they ought. Much was made about the clash between Texas and Ohio State earlier this season. Texas finished the year with three losses, one of them against Ohio State. It was a very different team from the one that stunned USC in previous year’s Rose Bowl. But Texas was highly ranked. Because people who hadn’t seen them play thought they were a good team. One honest writer cast a protest vote for Boise State as the top ranked team. Whoever that writer is, he or she has earned the right to pen the by now obvious column declaring that what college football needs is a playoff.
The solution is obvious, but money stands in the way. The Bowls, the major conferences and Notre Dame profit far too much from the BCS to allow the lesser conferences like the Western Athletic or the Mid-American or the Mountain West to join the party in an actual eight or sixteen game playoff that would actually allow the teams to compete to crown a Champion.
Commentator Norman Chad once declared that true sports don’t determine the winner by voting. This was why athletic competitions with subjective styles of selecting winners could not be called true sports. Your fate was not in your hands. You couldn’t win and therefore prove your mettle. College Football’s postseason sadly has long been an athletic competition and not a sport.
So in Gainesville celebrate your Champs. Urban Meyer did a great job game planning. And that made a huge difference. Make no mistake, though. This Championship belongs in part to Meyer’s predecessor Ron Zook, who recruited many of the players who went out and whupped Ohio State. They toppled Goliath and won the big game. But the matchup was picked, not entirely earned. And until the Championship Game is truly the clash of the last two teams standing after a playoff tournament, the conclusion of every College Football season will carry some baggage.
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| Monday, January 8, 2007 |
Nick Saban is working the phones to put together his staff, which will likely not include LSU offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher.
Thomas Murphy of the Mobile Press-Register reports that “Saban has so far hired Kevin Steele, likely as defensive coordinator, Lance Thompson and Kirby Smart, who will probably handle defensive backs” as well as “Todd Alles, a former program assistant for Ohio State, to be the director of football operations, one source said. Randy Ross, a 17-year veteran on the UA staff, had previously held the post, though a school is not limited to one coach in such an off-the-field position.”
Offensive coordinator is, of course, the most pressing need and there appear to be multiple irons in the fire. “Saban has approached his former assistant at LSU, Jimbo Fisher, as well as Rice offensive coordinator Major Applewhite, Southern California offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and possibly others to gauge their interest in joining his first Crimson Tide staff.” Applewhite is especially intriguing, as he “is seen as one of the brightest young offensive minds in the game. The former Texas quarterback and Baton Rouge, La., native, helped lead Rice to its first bowl berth in 45 years this season.”
There is a growing consensus that Fisher won’t take the job. He’s hemmed and hawed around long enough that Florida State has withdrawn its offer. Ian Rapoport reports that the biggest obstacle is the desire by both Alabama and FSU to sign him to a contract with a buyout clause, whereas he wants to keep his options open in case the NFL carousel creates an opening at Georgia Tech, in addition to the already-open Louisville job.
Paul Gattis mentions some other candidates for staff openings: “Steve Marshall, who most recently coached the offensive line with the NFL’s Houston Texans. And Mississippi State assistant Shane Beamer, son of Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, has interviewed with Saban.”
From AP-
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Troy Smith’s Heisman Trophy was shipped home because airport security would not allow the Ohio State quarterback to take it on the plane Tuesday.
Smith wore a black leather jacket with the Heisman insignia on back when he arrived at the airport from New York, where he was presented college football’s most coveted trophy.
Eddie George, the last Buckeye to win the Heisman in 1995, had his trophy get stuck in an airport X-ray machine, losing the tip of its right index finger and bending the middle finger.
“We decided to have it shipped. That’s much easier. How times have changed. Eddie carried it on the plane and put it in the seat next to him,” sports information director Steve Snapp said.
Smith said he didn’t mind.
“No, because Eddie’s finger got bent,” Smith said. “I don’t want that to happen to mine.”
Don’t you feel safer when airport security protects us from a person whose picture was in every newspaper across the country, from carrying a large object onto an airplane? I mean exploding Heisman trophies packed with semtex are a definite national security threat.
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| Thursday, December 7, 2006 |
Texas Tech coach Bob Knight has tied Adolph Rupp on the all-time wins list and needs just four more to pass Dean Smith for first place.
 Bob Knight shook hands with the opposing coach, put his head down and walked off the court. Victory No. 876, the one that tied him with legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp for second place on the career list and moved him within three of tying former North Carolina coach Dean Smith for the top spot, didn’t even get a mention from the public address announcer.
Texas Tech’s 66-59 victory at Louisiana Tech on Wednesday night wasn’t followed by a ceremony. The thing that made it like so many of the other wins in Knight’s 41-year career was his usual gruff demeanor when he asked to comment on catching the late Rupp.
Knight reflected back on his playing days as a reserve on Ohio State teams that reached three straight Final Fours in the 1960s. “The thing I remember about Adolph Rupp is that one time I scored seven points against the ornery son of a bitch to help beat him,” Knight said, referring to Ohio State’s 87-74 victory over the Wildcats in the 1961 NCAA tournament. “That’s a lot bigger in my memory than this.”
You just have to love Bob Knight. Apparently, ornery SOBs win a lot of basketball games.
OTB
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