Barack Obama visited the UT football facilities recently and had the chance to hang out with the coaches and players. Among other things (there’s a video you can watch at the link), he threw the ball around with Horns quarterback Colt McCoy and WR Quan Cosby.
The best part, though:
Brown says the tour was not an endorsement of Obama’s campaign and said the same tour was offered to Hillary Clinton.
Hillary chucking the pigskin around. I’d love to see that.
Filed under College Football
There are times when the Blogosphere kicks ass. The Wizard of Odds contacted Michael Clark, the coach at Bridgewater (Va.) College who is also the chairman of the rules committee, and asked if he would be willing to elaborate further about the newly proposed clock changes.
Mr. Clark has proved both gracious and informative about this. Here’s the money part of what he had to say in response.
“From an ESPN perspective, I believe 3 hours and 20 minutes is the number they would like to work near [for length of games]. However to do this there has to be all three groups involved and not just the played game itself. Television production has to be more disciplined with time of commercial breaks and piggy-backing replay and commercial time together. College administrators need to keep halftime events tracked tightly and the like. In the past, all game-length responsibility has been pushed on the game product itself…”
I give him credit. This is a much less submissive position than the one I originally interpreted him to have. The question is, though, what happens if these proposed changes don’t get the broadcast time down to ESPN-approved levels?
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UPDATE: Dennis Dodd airs some similar thoughts from UConn HC Randy Edsall:
We think rules committee member Randy Edsall, the Connecticut coach, has it right.
“We, as coaches, are willing to do some things to speed up the pace of play because we understand the TV games are a little bit longer, ” Edsall said. “We also have to have the cooperation of the TV people.”
Two changes that were discussed: 1) compel networks to go to a commercial during a replay. That kills two birds. Networks get to sell product, instead of wasting down time with happy chatter.2) Cut the length of halftime.
“We might have to go to a 15-minute halftime,” Edsall added. “Get your (commercials) done before the game. Get them done in your breaks. There has to be some give and take on all three sides. It just can’t always be the coaches trying to come up with ways to (speed up) the pace of the game.”
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, It's Just Bidness, The Blogosphere, The NCAA
Phil Fulmer is an educator. I wonder what the major is called.
At least he knows how to spell “sheriff”. Or use the spell check from his word processing program. Good job.
Filed under The Glass is Half Fulmer
October 6, 2007: LSU 28, Florida 24
Before there was The Celebration, there was this outpouring of Gator class – the pregame stomp on the Tiger logo:
Hmm… I wonder how much Franz Beard and Danny Wuerffel fretted over that.
There’s only one stat you need to remember from this game: LSU was 5-5 on fourth down conversions. To get an idea of how staggering a number that is, consider that seven SEC teams converted less than 10 fourth down tries all season.
And those calls weren’t made at inconsequential points in the game, either:
That’s right – on every drive that involved a LSU fourth down conversion attempt, the Tigers scored a touchdown. (On the two drives where Miles elected to go for field goals, Colt David missed both times.)
I hope Miles had enough sense to hightail it over to a casino after the game, or at least buy a lottery ticket somewhere. You should always feed a hot streak.
Testosterone display aside, Miles had an excellent game plan for Florida. He certainly learned one lesson from Auburn’s upset of the Gators – keep UF’s offense off the field. The Tigers held the ball for almost 36 minutes and limited Florida to 58 total plays on offense. Even with that, Florida was still able to open up ten point leads twice in the game.
In the end, though, Superman wasn’t super enough.
Tebow’s fourth quarter interception set up a short field drive that saw LSU close the gap to three points with around twelve minutes to go. The Gators went three and out on their next drive. LSU responded with a fifteen play scoring drive that took over eight minutes off the clock. It was the first time – at about one minute left in the fourth quarter – that the Tigers had led in the game.
It ended on a Florida incomplete pass.
Here’s a highlight reel:
Filed under SEC Football
Get The Picture 