The titles are getting worse the deeper into this I get. Last official post of my school semester but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I intend to keep up with this thing, especially the closer we get to college football season. I missed a whole season with y'all, I feel like it's important to keep doing this stuff. Besides it's fun.
So for my last post I've decided to do my take on satellite camps.
It was Jim Harbaugh who really got the interest in these things. I think it was also Jim Harbaugh that made people question if satellite camps needed to be regulated since they seem to teeter on the verge of being out of control. Honestly it's really the SEC that complains about them. And it's because the SEC wants all the players to come to them and if Jim Harbaugh holds these fancy, schmancy camps and no one from the SEC schools show up, then what do they really have? I know that's not all there is to it, but I think that's mostly it. This article from CBS.com talks about an insider visiting the satellite camp held by Harbaugh and talking to him about exactly what it is. When Harbaugh was asked by the interviewer why he thought the SEC was upset about the camps he gave a pretty vague answer, "I've got an idea what it is. I'm confirming it. I want to confirm it first."
Mostly the people who were at said satellite camp said that the SEC won all the championships so why should they complain so much. Just let them have this. But I mean I guess I can kind of see where people like Nick Saban and Jeremy Foley, former Florida AD, can be upset. The camps have turned into more of recruiting stuff that goes unregulated by the NCAA. Instead since the NCAA doesn't really have rules on it they just make up rules as they go along and expect them to be followed. I don't really think that's fair, but at the same time if other coaches have recruiting rules that they have to follow, and they don't have these unregulated satellite camps, then I can see where the frustration is. But Harbaugh doesn't really seem to agree that the camps are for recruiting purposes as much as it is, in his words, "for the love of the game".
I'm sorry, but that's total and complete BS. Harbaugh may have a love and a passion for the game of football and for the kids that come to these camps. All of that may be entirely true, but if anyone, for one second, thinks that Harbaugh isn't also interested in how much this could help him and his team well that's crazy. It is basically all about being able to recruit in a roundabout way, and honestly the people who come to these things don't see it as an issue. If you read the comments from the families and the players who come to the camps, they all see this as a positive thing that comes to their communities and provides opportunities for kids to be seen when they otherwise might not have.
And who knows, these things may be awesome. And that's great, but does that mean that it's entirely fair to have them? Probably not. The coaches from the ACC and SEC can rejoice because the NCAA has new legislation on the table that deals with recruiting and the satellite camps in general. It would limit them to just a 10-day period in June which would suck for Harbaugh and most likely upset him, but it would make SEC and ACC coaches very, very happy. I don't see that as a fair compromise, to be honest. But the NCAA is not exactly known for their fairness and understanding, so we'll see what happens with it. You can read the full legislation stuff here.
Well, for the semester it's been fun college football fans, and my loyal dad who has read all of my blog posts every single time I've posted one. Thanks a lot dad! You're the reason I love football.
Keep returning fans, I'll be back.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Girl Power
Good morning college football fans, and dad. With just two blog posts left to fulfill my obligations for my class this semester I'm running out of ideas. The off-season is in full swing, and it's boring. I watched a baseball game yesterday. A whole baseball game. The worst part is that I enjoyed it. I'm having a rough time. Today though I'm going to talk about an interesting story that surfaced. You can read the whole thing here.
Basically it's about a girl named Becca Longo who became part of history the other day when she became the first girl to sign a letter of intent to play college football at a Division I or II school. She will play at Division II Adams State. She's also the first girl from Arizona to do so. Becca is a kicker and won the starting job at her high school, Chandler Basha, after her coach saw her boot a 42-yard field goal through the uprights. He says that he doesn't see it as her being a girl or coaching a girl, she competed and she won the job herself.
I've read about this girl before, and I love it. I know people have weird things about girls playing in "men's sports" but come on, get over it. If she wants to play and she can compete and she can be good, and she doesn't mind it, what does it matter to anyone else that she's a girl? I would be willing to bet that most of her teammates don't even notice that, they just see her as part of the team. Her coach asked his brother about how to coach a girl, his brother was an assistant coach at New Mexico when Katie Hnida was there. Katie was the first girl to score a point in a NCAA Division I college football game. She walked on at Colorado and transferred to New Mexico. Anyway his brother told him that "you don't coach a girl you coach a player".
Honestly I love that mindset. She isn't just a girl. Her biological sex doesn't define her. She can be a girl and also be a great football player. People don't look at dudes and go hey that guy is good for a boy. She should just be good because she's good. That's it. So you go Becca!
Basically it's about a girl named Becca Longo who became part of history the other day when she became the first girl to sign a letter of intent to play college football at a Division I or II school. She will play at Division II Adams State. She's also the first girl from Arizona to do so. Becca is a kicker and won the starting job at her high school, Chandler Basha, after her coach saw her boot a 42-yard field goal through the uprights. He says that he doesn't see it as her being a girl or coaching a girl, she competed and she won the job herself.
I've read about this girl before, and I love it. I know people have weird things about girls playing in "men's sports" but come on, get over it. If she wants to play and she can compete and she can be good, and she doesn't mind it, what does it matter to anyone else that she's a girl? I would be willing to bet that most of her teammates don't even notice that, they just see her as part of the team. Her coach asked his brother about how to coach a girl, his brother was an assistant coach at New Mexico when Katie Hnida was there. Katie was the first girl to score a point in a NCAA Division I college football game. She walked on at Colorado and transferred to New Mexico. Anyway his brother told him that "you don't coach a girl you coach a player".
Honestly I love that mindset. She isn't just a girl. Her biological sex doesn't define her. She can be a girl and also be a great football player. People don't look at dudes and go hey that guy is good for a boy. She should just be good because she's good. That's it. So you go Becca!
Monday, April 10, 2017
Arrested Development
Oh the glorious off-season. How I despise it and yet it does bring the stories that people enjoy. By that I mean all the college football players who simply cannot stay out of trouble long enough to make it to the next season. Frankly if I can make it the eight-plus months in between seasons without getting arrested on drug charges and or assault or otherwise, then so can they. So I'm going to recount a few of the most recent off-season woes for a few players as well as an honorable mention.
Lord have mercy. The game was called after this because it is an illegal hit that is blatantly against targeting rules, and normally there's no reason to hit this hard because you're playing against your OWN TEAM!! I mean I'm not sure if Jonathan Abram just forgot where he was or didn't care where he was or really hated the guy he smacked, but either way how stupid. He hasn't released a statement on it, but I'm pretty sure he'd say he wasn't guilty either. Yeah okay Jonathan, keep telling yourself that.
So that's it for today college football fans. I'm going to wrap up this semester soon, but hopefully I'll keep up with this thing. I have missed it. Until next time, probably tomorrow, bye!
Baker's Dozen
Okay so he didn't actually have a dozen charges against him, I just like clever titles. Baker Mayfield, the rising Oklahoma quarterback who made quite a name for himself last season, was arrested in Arkansas back in February. He was arrested on charges of public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and fleeing and resisting arrest. So yeah not a dozen charges but still a little more than he should be getting. He entered his plea bargain in recently of not guilty. Yeah okay sure Baker keep telling yourself that. Whatever the case this is one of my favorite stories so far because Baker Mayfield has so much going for him, and yet he does something so stupid. I mean watch the video below of the amazing tackle that the police officer laid on him, even if Baker Mayfield wasn't doing any of the things he was arrested for, fat chance, that video will still live on.
Jock Itch?
So this one was just hilarious to me. I mean at first reading the charges against Texas A&M sophomore wide receiver Kirk Merritt you just kinda shake your head. Two charges of indecent exposure. According to the report, basically he exposed himself to two female tutors a day or so apart. They both reported him and charges were filed. He entered a not guilty plea, that seems to be a recurring theme here, but his lawyer gave an interesting response when asked why his client exposed himself to these two women.
"Kirk Merrit has been charged with Indecent Exposure under Section 21.08 of the Texas Penal Code because of two incidents during tutoring sessions that happened on two consecutive days... While Kirk is very embarrassed about the situation, and has apologized to the two tutors that he offended, he did not intend to gratify anyone by exposing himself. The fact is that Kirk had a bad case of jock itch."
Okay first of all, it is embarrassing that he exposed his nether regions out in front of strange women, and it is embarrassing that he now is going to have indecent exposure on his record, but it's even more embarrassing that his lawyer admitted in open court on record the reasoning for this is because he had jock itch.
Second of all, even if he did have jock itch why on earth did he not go to a bathroom and take care of it there?? Why did he feel the need to do that in front of people, and fully exposed? Stick a hand down there or something don't full on flash people. Good Lord. He didn't deny the charges, he's just not guilty. Yeah okay Kirk, keep telling yourself that.
Honorable Mention
The honorable mention for this goes to Mississippi State's Jonathan Abram, who didn't get arrested or anything like that, instead he shut down his team's spring game because he knocked the lights out of his OWN TEAMMATE ILLEGALLY. No, yeah, he targeted his own player and knocked his block off, injuring him, and making Dan Mullen seriously peeved off. You can see the hit from this tweet below.
This brutal hit by Jonathan Abram on Bennie Braswell ended Mississippi State's spring game early. pic.twitter.com/Yvlq3sJPIu— William McFadden (@willmcfadden) April 8, 2017
Lord have mercy. The game was called after this because it is an illegal hit that is blatantly against targeting rules, and normally there's no reason to hit this hard because you're playing against your OWN TEAM!! I mean I'm not sure if Jonathan Abram just forgot where he was or didn't care where he was or really hated the guy he smacked, but either way how stupid. He hasn't released a statement on it, but I'm pretty sure he'd say he wasn't guilty either. Yeah okay Jonathan, keep telling yourself that.
So that's it for today college football fans. I'm going to wrap up this semester soon, but hopefully I'll keep up with this thing. I have missed it. Until next time, probably tomorrow, bye!
Borrowed Content
It's finals week college football fans. That means I've got a little bit of time to fit an awful lot of content into. So I decided to borrow some content from a few people for today. Just until I can craft a better blog post. Here's some college football videos from last season to hold you over for a little while.
College Football Clutch//Game Winning Plays 2016/2017
College Football Pump Up 2017/2018
College Football Hard Hits 2016/2017
And of course:
College Football Fails 2016/2017
Hope this will hold you over for a little while until I can take some time to write a few new things. Enjoy college football fans! See you soon!
Monday, April 3, 2017
Baylor... Again.
Baylor. The most obnoxious program in college football. The one that the NCAA still isn't talking about. When the fact is that it's important that people keep talking about it because as long as people are still talking and still upset there's a chance that something might get done about it. So people need to keep writing articles and need to keep writing blogs because it might persuade people to look at this like it needs to be looked at.
Having said all that the reason that we're back discussing Baylor is because of this article. It's basically an article about how Baylor is moving to dismiss the lawsuit against them that alleges the 52 acts of sexual violence committed by over 30 Baylor football players and the culture of "selling sex" to recruits in order to get them to come to the university to play football. The dismissal is on the grounds of, according to the article, "as a general rule universities do not have a legal duty to protect their students from harm caused by other students."
Okay can we just talk about that for a second? First of all that's a pretty weak reason to dismiss a case with the allegations being what they are. The school doesn't have a legal duty to protect their students? Well the same argument could be made for literally anything else and people would be upset about it. If a school didn't have a severe weather plan people would be mad, especially if something happened and the school wasn't prepared and their students were harmed. See how stupid it sounds in this case. "Well the school doesn't really have a legal duty to protect students from harm of severe weather." That's how stupid this sounds. Schools do have a duty to protect students that pay money to attend their universities. And saying that they don't just seems like a cop-out.
Second of all, this seems like a poor attempt to get out of a lawsuit. It's not that like they're dismissing this case on the grounds of they found evidence to the contrary, they want to dismiss because they don't want to take responsibility for the safety of their students. That's basically what they're saying. And that seems to me like an admittance of guilt. This is an easy way to get out of the lawsuit, or so they think, and so, to me, it seems like they're saying, "Yeah we did this. Yeah we're guilty. But we don't really have to take care of the students who go here, so there's no reason we should be sued for this." That's sick.
Why would anyone want to go to a school that so flippantly says that they don't have to protect their students? Why on earth would someone say, "I trust my kid to go to that school." They openly said that they don't feel like they have to protect their students, which we all know translates to, "We will protect the important ones." Like the athletes who are responsible for all this. It makes me so angry.
The lawsuit was also filed on the basis of statute of limitations which had expired because in Texas statute of limitations for sexual assault is five years and Title IX is two years. Not that it would have mattered because Baylor mishandled the Title IX investigation anyway, even though there was no actual Title IX office at Baylor at the time, the school claims that there were plenty of avenues that could have been used to report it. You can go here to view a timeline of events at Baylor that show that the first sexual assault was reported in 2013 and that the Title IX office (or VP of Human Resources as it was known at the time) didn't know about it until 2015, conveniently two years later.
And all of this is a just a build-up to saying this: Why on earth isn't the NCAA or someone getting more involved in this? We punish schools and players for payments and for signing autographs and selling things with their name on it. We punish schools and players for a plethora of things, but we can't punish the school for doing something like this? Baylor needs to be punished. And the people involved in this need to be punished more. Because regardless of whether all of this is true or only some of it is true, Baylor is in the wrong. And if we just stand by and let all of this happen what does this say about us? It doesn't matter if there actually were 52 cases of rape and sexual violence, if there was only one case that is enough. Students shouldn't be afraid to go to school, they shouldn't have to worry that if something happens to them at the hand of other students that the school is going to cover it up and hide it so that the other "more important" students aren't harmed by the allegation. What about the victim? What about their life? What about them? And by Baylor saying that they don't have a legal obligation to protect their students it's like they're throwing the victim away. They don't matter. What matters to Baylor is protecting Baylor. And that's gross. If they had done what they were supposed to do they wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place.
Baylor needs to take responsibility for what happened, and they need to be punished accordingly. Someone needs to do something. This is isn't over, and as long as there are still things happening with it people need to keep talking about it. Because as long as people are still talking there's still a chance that something might be done to prevent it from happening again.
Having said all that the reason that we're back discussing Baylor is because of this article. It's basically an article about how Baylor is moving to dismiss the lawsuit against them that alleges the 52 acts of sexual violence committed by over 30 Baylor football players and the culture of "selling sex" to recruits in order to get them to come to the university to play football. The dismissal is on the grounds of, according to the article, "as a general rule universities do not have a legal duty to protect their students from harm caused by other students."
Okay can we just talk about that for a second? First of all that's a pretty weak reason to dismiss a case with the allegations being what they are. The school doesn't have a legal duty to protect their students? Well the same argument could be made for literally anything else and people would be upset about it. If a school didn't have a severe weather plan people would be mad, especially if something happened and the school wasn't prepared and their students were harmed. See how stupid it sounds in this case. "Well the school doesn't really have a legal duty to protect students from harm of severe weather." That's how stupid this sounds. Schools do have a duty to protect students that pay money to attend their universities. And saying that they don't just seems like a cop-out.
Second of all, this seems like a poor attempt to get out of a lawsuit. It's not that like they're dismissing this case on the grounds of they found evidence to the contrary, they want to dismiss because they don't want to take responsibility for the safety of their students. That's basically what they're saying. And that seems to me like an admittance of guilt. This is an easy way to get out of the lawsuit, or so they think, and so, to me, it seems like they're saying, "Yeah we did this. Yeah we're guilty. But we don't really have to take care of the students who go here, so there's no reason we should be sued for this." That's sick.
Why would anyone want to go to a school that so flippantly says that they don't have to protect their students? Why on earth would someone say, "I trust my kid to go to that school." They openly said that they don't feel like they have to protect their students, which we all know translates to, "We will protect the important ones." Like the athletes who are responsible for all this. It makes me so angry.
The lawsuit was also filed on the basis of statute of limitations which had expired because in Texas statute of limitations for sexual assault is five years and Title IX is two years. Not that it would have mattered because Baylor mishandled the Title IX investigation anyway, even though there was no actual Title IX office at Baylor at the time, the school claims that there were plenty of avenues that could have been used to report it. You can go here to view a timeline of events at Baylor that show that the first sexual assault was reported in 2013 and that the Title IX office (or VP of Human Resources as it was known at the time) didn't know about it until 2015, conveniently two years later.
And all of this is a just a build-up to saying this: Why on earth isn't the NCAA or someone getting more involved in this? We punish schools and players for payments and for signing autographs and selling things with their name on it. We punish schools and players for a plethora of things, but we can't punish the school for doing something like this? Baylor needs to be punished. And the people involved in this need to be punished more. Because regardless of whether all of this is true or only some of it is true, Baylor is in the wrong. And if we just stand by and let all of this happen what does this say about us? It doesn't matter if there actually were 52 cases of rape and sexual violence, if there was only one case that is enough. Students shouldn't be afraid to go to school, they shouldn't have to worry that if something happens to them at the hand of other students that the school is going to cover it up and hide it so that the other "more important" students aren't harmed by the allegation. What about the victim? What about their life? What about them? And by Baylor saying that they don't have a legal obligation to protect their students it's like they're throwing the victim away. They don't matter. What matters to Baylor is protecting Baylor. And that's gross. If they had done what they were supposed to do they wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place.
Baylor needs to take responsibility for what happened, and they need to be punished accordingly. Someone needs to do something. This is isn't over, and as long as there are still things happening with it people need to keep talking about it. Because as long as people are still talking there's still a chance that something might be done to prevent it from happening again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)