There's been lots of blogging this week -- this is my fourth post in eight days -- so I'm going to keep this week's Pregame short for you guys. We're probably all pretty tired of all the analysis this week has generated, anyway.
(That, and I'm writing this from a friend's couch in Loudoun County, so I'd like to wrap this up quickly.)
Welcome to Seattle
The GameDay crew is headed to a game featuring an I-guess-they're-good Washington team and an I-guess-they're-getting-better USC. Which is all well and good, I suppose. The Pac-12 is down this year, and with the average viewer is starting to get a little tired of watching the same four teams on Saturday morning. Combine the two, and you've got a game where the hype is more manufactured than endemic. But hey, maybe something crazy will happen.
However, if Reese and Co. strictly went to the best game of the week, they'd likely be setting up shop in suburban Philadelphia, on the Catholic grounds of Villanova University.
At one point in the second half on Saturday, the kid sitting next to Meghan and I inside Robbins Stadium let his frustration boil over. JMU was driving into Richmond territory for approximately the one zillionth time that game, and there were no signs of Richmond stopping the Dukes any time soon. The JMU run game wasn't breaking off 30 yards at a time, but it was converting short-yardage situations at a clip well above 50%. Bryan Schor was absolutely having his way with Richmond's back end. It was the latter part that ya boy seemed to take issue with.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE No. 1 RANKED PASSING DEFENSE?!" he yelled.
I couldn't help myself. I leaned over Meghan, caught his eye, and snapped back, "You hadn't played JMU yet."
I got the chance to talk to a lot of Spiders fans while sitting behind enemy lines in section 215, and one of the impressions I left with was that they had assumed the 2015 team was virtually identical to this 2016 team -- all flash, no fire. They also showed up with the idea that JMU's offense was potent, but if you could stop Abdullah, you could stop the Dukes. They didn't believe the defense was capable of making any stops against an offense of Richmond's caliber. Maybe most importantly, it seems some of them even thought that Richmond's defense would bottle up JMU's offense completely, limiting them to only two or three touchdowns.
At this point in the season, JMU's offense is firing on a level that I would have previously thought unimaginable. The emergence of Alls as a championship-caliber playmaker, as opposed to just another talented wideout, is one of the many features this team can sport during the final two games of the regular season. JMU can sling it around like Vad & Co. did last year, but their greatest ability was on display yesterday, particularly in the first half -- running with tempo.
Watch JMU on the third or fourth first down of a long drive. They'll snap the ball quickly on first down, and run the ball through the B gap for six or seven yards. When the defense brings extra defenders into the box, Schor can pick apart a collapsed field; if the defense stays thinned out, the offensive line can continue to snap the ball quickly and run with pace. The combined pace and strength of the offensive line wears down almost any defensive front -- even a really, really talented on like the one in Richmond. And make no mistake... this Richmond team, beat up in the backfield as they are, is a really good team.
Before I move on, I do want to mention something a few people have asked about -- what happened on the sideline at the end of the game? For those who were watching on TV and could only hear the announcers referencing it, there were two guys down on the field level on the UR track, and one of them started talking trash to the JMU sideline after the game was in hand. It wasn't probably anything you haven't ever seen before, in terms of back-and-forth trash talking, until the Richmond guy left the track and entered the JMU sideline. As in, on the grass, amongst the players.
Predictably, 50-some JMU players did not take kindly to a Richmondite getting in their faces on their own sideline. Some tables were knocked over, and some shoves were exchanged. I would love to know what UR guy's best-case scenario for walking into the opposing team's sideline was and starting a fight... either way, a field-level police officer had a brief exchange with his buddy, which I imagine went something like this:
Police Officer: "Excuse me, bruh, but you'd be wise to seize control of this current conflict by initiating a retreat of sorts, because if I have to, none of the fair denizens of Robbins Field, including and especially your friend, are going to like the series of events that shall unfold."
Friend: "Hmm. You've articulated quite an excellent point, sir. Thank you for sharing your view of this unfortunate incident. I shall respond as advised."
Police Officer: "You're quite welcome, young man. Thank you for acting in such a steadfast and responsible manner, saving me from escalating this incident of aggression any further."
The friend grabbed him from behind around the small of his neck and drug him back off the field and onto the track, where he was escorted out of the complex.
Throughout the game, UR had basketball players down with field-level access, throwing t-shirts from the track into the stands. My assumption, which is a 100% guess, is that these two guys are somehow linked to the UR basketball team.
Anyway, back to the game. We've all been enjoying this one for a couple of days already, so I'll leave you with Fox Sport's great preview that we all somehow missed, Richmond Times-Dispatch sports editor Mike Szvetitz's column from after the game, and some footage Curt Dudley recorded and posted to Facebook. This is from the UR series toward the end of the game that ended with a turnover on downs. Unsurprisingly, he was nice enough to let me post it here. JMU fans -- y'all root. I'm proud of you.
We've talked several times this season about how Baylor is unproven and over-ranked, but ----
wait, does that say SIXTY-TWO?!
Look, I've been captain of the "Someone please explain Baylor's rank to me" club all year, but losing at home to TCU by forty points? I don't think anyone saw that coming. Baylor has been loudly touting their defensive metrics in conference play, but no one was impressed that they led the Big 12 in scoring defense after two byes, plus game against Oklahoma State, Kansas and Iowa State.
Still, I would have thought Baylor to be a top 4 finisher in Big 12 play, with potential losses to Oklahoma and West Virginia. With that home win in hand vs Oklahoma State, the Bears looked like they would at least nominally challenge for the Big 12 title; with a December game in Morgantown and a tilt with the Sooners on tap this weekend, Baylor could easily be a .500 team in conference play this year.
West Virginia 48, Kansas 21
This game, frankly, was not as close as it looked, and it doesn't look all that close to begin with. West Virginia led 31-0 at halftime; it was 45-7 late in the third. It was unsexy and methodical and more of the blue collar descriptors that have come to describe this particular 2016 West Virginia team.
I have been more nonchalant toward polls this year than I ever have been before, but I'm fearful that West Virginia's placement at No. 20 in the first playoff rankings may leave them with too much room to make up to legitimately challenge for a playoff spot. The Mountaineers are on playoff life support anyway, but theoretically, their loss is a good one -- it came before November, on the road, against a good team. At 7-1 on November 5, and with a high-profile, top-10 matchup still left on the docket, it would only be somewhat outrageous for them to mount a comeback to compete for a playoff spot.
Obviously, the Baylor result hurts them. For West Virginia to truly still have a shot at representing the Big 12 in the playoff, it needed to notch marquee wins against Oklahoma and Baylor. For Baylor to be considered a "marquee" win, it needed to show up with as few losses as possible. Now, a three-loss Bears team by November's end is not only possible, but downright likely.
I'm interested to watch the committee's newest rankings this week and next week to see if any sort of correction occurs. You don't have to believe this WVU team is elite, but at 7-1, they probably belong in the top 15. I'm not sure wins over Kansas (awful) or Texas (inconsistent) do much to raise the profile.
Aggies trip at Mississippi State
Yeah, sure, you can cite Trevor Knight getting hurt, and I guess that plays a part here. But I went back and watched a sped up version of this game Sunday night, and Mississippi State's offensive line just worked A&M's front. That's what this game came down to. A&M was unable to stop State from extending long drives -- State's eventual game-winner capped a 14-play, 73-yard drive -- but they also couldn't stop the home run ball. State had two touchdown plays of 60+ yards in the first half. The Aggies were down two touchdowns at halftime, and without Knight, they just couldn't recover.
Soooo, where did Texas A&M land in the polls after their second loss of the season, the most recent of which game at the hands of a team who is under .500, won't win another game the rest of the year, and gave up 41 points to something called Samford?
I'm starting a new recurring segment today titled "let's be nerds," where I impart to you current event knowledge that I find interesting, yet is almost definitely useless and generally lame.
This weekend, I saw a story about a Japanese designer named Hajime Narukawa who invented a new map to replace the germanic Mercator map that was pioneered hundreds of years ago, and generally misrepresents the sizes and centrality of certain parts of the map -- particularly Greenland and central Europe. The math and science behind it is next-level nerdy/boring, but you can find a short writeup from Wired here.
If you're like me, reading even three sentences of this story may have reminded you of The West Wing and Leo McGarry's Big Block of Cheese.
(For what it's worth, President Obama has hosted a BBoC day the last three years -- replete with an enviable amount of puns -- and Gary Johnson hosted one in New Mexico while governor/has pledged to continue the practice if ever elected in the future.)
We end the Hangover with a civic reminder -- please go vote tomorrow. If you failed to register, or have mailed a ballot in, I suppose I'm not talking to you. But surprisingly, there is consistently a fairly large discrepancy between the number of registered voters in America and the number of actual votes cast. The takeaway: lots of people are opting not to register to vote at all, but some people are registering without following through, too.
I'm not going to lecture you on politics one way or the other. Many of you know that I support Gary Johnson; I'm happy to talk privately about why I've chosen to support him over other candidates. I don't want this post to be a call to arms for any particular candidate, whether it's Trump, Clinton, Johnson, or Joe Exotic. Whoever you support, whatever your rational -- please study the ticket tonight, and take some time to vote tomorrow.
After all, the only difference between a democracy and an oligarchy is participation.
Every week this season, I listen to talking heads tell me about how down the Big 12 is. They're no good. The format of the conference isn't tenable and can't challenge for a playoff spot. They don't play any defense. Without Texas and Oklahoma, this conference is a glorified version of the Mountain West.
But let's look at the numbers. It doesn't take a statistical wizard to figure out that, because the conference is smaller, it will have fewer championship contenders. All things being equal, it should also mean the conference has less pushovers at the bottom of the standings as well.
After an extended absence, Chase for Greatness will be up and running for the forseeable future. Today, I'll be doing my usual in-season preview of this weekend's slate of games, with some new additions. But first, some announcements.
Many longtime readers of the C4G blog may already know this, but for those that don't -- last month, I accepted a position as the Sports Editor at the Page News and Courier. It's a weekly paper based in the Valley that serves Page County. My job is primarily centered around high school sports, but I'm also free to write feature stories, sports commentary, outdoor sports stories, or whatever else I feel fits into the wide world of sports. Every week, I take the Sports section from 2-3 blank pages of InDesign pixels and turn it into a newspaper. It's similar to my role at the Breeze back in 2012-2013, but with more creative freedom.
If you've been around since the beginning, you know that this blog was originally created in February 2011 (over five and a half years ago!) for the purpose of eventually generating a real-world sports writing job. It's been a strange and circuitous path, but I'm finally here. For those that have stuck with me in the lean times, I thank you.
And speaking of the lean times... if you're a regular here at the Blog, I don't have to tell you that C4G has been on life support for a little while now. Every few months, I manage a strong writeup -- the consortium pieces with JMU Sports Blog et al. have been loads of fun, and writing one-off analysis pieces for softball or basketball certainly have served their purpose -- but my heart hasn't been in it for a little while now. I don't mind admitting that. It's not because I don't still love sports, and it's not because I've gotten away from writing. Simply put, I was working too many hours at too many jobs to put worthwhile time into this blog.
Your time is valuable, and there's a lot of places you can go for quality sports analysis on the internet. I'm not going to waste your time by shitting out half-assed commentary.
Fortunately, that's no longer issue. A return to journalism means more free time for me, and, consequently, more commentary on here. I'm looking forward to writing more... but, in the spirit of personal evolution, I'm going to tackle more than just sports. After all, my conversational topics go far beyond the realm of Bridgeforth Stadium, so why not branch out past how gross the JMU run game is?
I've already got some creative nonfiction dialed up for later this year, as well as an Op/Ed that will drop the first weekend of November. And, of course, new sports ideas.
I'm going to start a new recurring blog post called "Polls are dumb." The recurring theme of this post will be that sports poll are dumb.
Finally, more free time means more #PushupsAndPilates. I'm not entirely sure that one actually matters here, though.
JMU at New Hampshire (12pm kickoff)
A confession: I picked against JMU here. Like, everywhere that I possible could. I took the Wildcats on JMUSB's prediction thread. I picked against the Dukes in my Pigskin Pick Em panel in the PNC. (That's the Page News and Courier. Get used to seeing that acronym, you city folks.) I scratched "Cats over Dogs, soz Jmaddy" inside a bathroom stall in Warren Hall on Wednesday. I do not think JMU will win this game.
It's not like New Hampshire has a better team. Defensively, the team is gap-sound. They do what they're supposed to, though it's been against unimpressive competition.
Offensively, they're pretty unimpressive -- think of the San Francisco 49ers offense, but with less protesting and more camo.
On second thought, that'd probably be a fairly accurate contrast between the entire city of San Francisco and the entire state of New Hampshire, if we're keeping it one hundred.
If you're measuring talent against talent, JMU wins in a runaway. But JMU hasn't won at New Hampshire since topping the Cats 42-23 in 2006, and I just have one of those amorphous gut feelings that the streak doesn't get broken here. There's something about Durham, New Hampshire that seems to vex the Dukes. So I'm taking the happiness hedge. Sorry bout it.
For context, here is a compilation of the last five games against UNH:
11/9/13 -- New Hampshire defeats JMU, 33-17.
JMU was shut out in the first half. Birdsong pulled it within 20-17 early in the fourth quarter, but that's as close as the Dukes would get. One week later, JMU lost "The Stony Brook Game." One week earlier, Mickey Matthews notched his last win as the JMU head coach, a 31-21 Homecoming Weekend win over Villanova in the Burg.
11/5/11 -- New Hampshire defeats JMU, 28-10.
This is the Jace Edwards team that's better than you remember. They beat Eastern Kentucky in the playoffs before losing to a team out west that nobody paid any attention called North Dakota State, 26-14. At the time of the game in Durham, JMU was ranked No. 13. The Wildcats were No. 9. JMU didn't score after the first quarter.
Fun fact: previewing this UNH game was my first article for the Breeze. The article was called, "Dukes Pack Hope on New Hampshire." At the time, it didn't look like JMU would make the playoffs. The offensive line was young as hell and couldn't block with any kind of consistency.
Bonus fun fact: did you know Jace Edwards came from Texas' Midland Lee High School? AKA the "bad guys" from Friday Night Lights?
10/16/10 -- New Hampshire defeats JMU at Bridgeforth Stadium, 28-14.
35 days removed from The Game To End All Games (#twentyonesixteen), JMU loses a second home game. It lost to Delaware at home two weeks earlier. The Dukes were ranked No. 7 at the time, and did not score at all in the second half.
9/8/07 -- JMU defeats New Hampshire, 41-24, at Bridgeforth Stadium.
If you're looking for the last time JMU beat the Cats anywhere, here it is. Rodney Landers scrambled for a 9-yard touchdown run with 20 seconds left before halftime. New Hampshire scored on the opening possession of the second half, then JMU throat-punched them with 24 unanswered points to end the game.
Wait a minute. The last time JMU beat New Hampshire, the Cats were undefeated and ranked No. 1? AND IT WAS TEN YEARS AGO TO THE DAY?
Shit. Can I take back my pick?
West Virginia at Texas Tech, 12pm.
Well, of course these games are at the same time. After all, they're both critical road tests at critical junctions in critical seasons for both teams. Both are contending for national conference championships. Let's put them in the same time slot!
Personal battles aside, I'm not going to spend much time previewing this game. Frankly, I like the lack of national media exposure this year. All you need to know is that Texas Tech has a sick offense, a quarterback with an injured throwing shoulder, and one of the worst defenses in FBS football. Per Football Outsiders, Texas Tech ranks 109 in S&P+ adjusted defense.
West Virginia, per usual, has some nice offensive mojo.
What's this strange feeling in my loins? Am I... excited? For Big 10 football? I'm going to call my primary care physician.
No. 10 Nebraska at Indiana
Add Nebraska to the list of teams that are being vastly overlooked. The Huskers are undefeated in mid-October, and it feels like nobody is talking about them.
Then again, they play in a conference with Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio State, so maybe we don't need to. (They play at Camp Randall in two weeks and in Columbus the week after that, so we can all feel justified in ignoring them in a few weeks.)
Kansas State at No. 19 Oklahoma
Kansas State is the best team that you won't watch all year. Which is a shame, because Bill Snyder will probably retire at the end of the season, and they'll go back to being awful for the forseeable future.
No. 1 Alabama at No. 9 Tennessee
I'm not a believer in this Alabama team. They're even more mediocre at quarterback than usual, and their secondary is vulnerable. I'm not saying Tennessee is going to get them, because this Vols team is the most overrated team of the young playoff era... but someone is going to beat this team. I have a suspicion it's going to be Texas A&M. This is not a vintage Bama team. I'm unconvinced they're going to make the playoff.
No. 17 Virginia Tech at Syracuse
Justin Fuente is doing a hell of a job at Virginia Tech, so let's all give credit where credit is due. But isn't this the same team I watched piss their pants against Tennessee in Bristol, like, a month ago? Now, Danny Kanell is running around calling them National Championship contenders? Can we all relax a little on the "Tech is Back" rhetoric?
No. 12 Ole Miss at No. 22 Arkansas
Meh.
USC at Arizona
Dana Holgorsen is looking better and better, huh? Rich Rod's squad went south realllll quick. Sorry, Kenzie.
Iowa State at Texas
Some people said Charlie Strong was coaching for his job last week against Oklahoma. That seemed like a short-sighted thing to say. This week, it doesn't. If Texas loses at home to Iowa State... boy, bye.
Pitt at UVA
If I didn't already have two games to watch, two Aquatics In-Services to run, and other Saturday night shenanigans in the works, me and my Eat Shit Pitt shirt would take up an ever-so-haughty residence inside the confines of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Villanova at Richmond
Ugh. Can they both lose?
Debts & Diseases Double-Down
We close the Pregame with a new segment called the Debts & Diseases Double-Down. To quote C4G paragon Norm Macdonald -- "Sure, they call gambling a disease, but it's the only disease where you can win money."
I'm here to assist you in the eradication of your student loan debt, or the purchasing of that new flatscreen. Perhaps your bank can interest you in a house you can't quite afford? Do those jaguar commercials tickle your villainous fancy? Get yourself some vanity items! You deserve them. Make America Gaudy Again.
Anyway, here we go. Don't bet it if you don't got it.
$: Rutgers +6/Illinois
$$: Iowa State +14.5/Texas
$$$: Wisconsin +10.5/Ohio State
Chalk Play of the Week: San Jose State -2.5 over Nevada. It's not quite #pac12afterdark, but San Diego State is a solid team that's barely giving up anything at home. Wake up Sunday morning to find your winnings.
Bonus Play: Central Michigan at Northern Illinois, Under 64.5. This actually comes via Tom Fornelli, who is my #1 favorite follow on Twitter. Hilarious guy. Anyway, he picked this one out in his Pick 6 column for CBS Sports, and I think he's dead on the money here.
And so ends another glorious Weekend Pregame. Enjoy the pageantry. Ain't nothing like college football.
JMU softball opens regional play on Friday in Harrisonburg, marking the second straight year our eternal overlords at the NCAA will command three unfortunate schools to endure the unfriendly arms of the Friendly City. Veterans Memorial Park is all but guaranteed to sell out, so if the box office is still open, why are you still reading this stupid blog? Go get an all-weekend pass for $25.
In Case You've Been Under a Rock, JMU is good at softball. Like, really good. Like, beat-Tennessee-by-slaughter-rule-in-February-before-the-team-really-even-found-its-stride good.
The Dukes can score runs well enough -- they've always been pretty good at generating offense, even dating back to the Katie Flynn days -- but it's the pitching that makes them legitimate national championship contenders. Senior Jailyn Ford and sophomore (sophomore?!) Megan Good form arguably the best 1-2 combination of starting pitching anywhere in the western world. Both are All-Americans; both have ERA's under 1.0; both have pitched a perfect game.
Oh, and they're not just one-trick ponies, either. When they're not in the circle, they can light it up at the plate as well, which leads to some pretty mind-bending sports stats.
Leave it to Mattie Jones and K-Dub to pull out the heavy guns.
They're battle-tested. In the not-too-distant future, there should be a JMU-based 30-for-30 aimed at mid-major athletic departments that features how the Bourne & Co. drafted a schedule as a little guy and came out seeded as a giant. Here's a list of teams JMU beat today, all of which made the NCAA tournament, but zero of which actually played JMU in Harrisonburg:
UCF (ranked No. 17 at time of game)
Auburn (Ranked No. 5 at time of game)
Oklahoma State
Fordham
BYU
Arizona (JMU beat them twice)
Ohio State
Arizona State (Ranked No. 21 at time of game)
They ain't afraid of nobody.
#JMU softball went 4-0 against the Tennessee regional. Beat UT by slaughter rule, clipped Ohio State 7-4, and beat Arizona in Tucson twice.
The Regional Schedule features an ACC cousin (North Carolina), an in-state foe (Longwood), and a sub-.500 group of nerds that got lost on the way to chess club (Princeton).
Seriously though, there isn't a lot to see here. An intra-state matchup later in the weekend could be the type of bloodbath that is fun for three or four innings, but ultimately gets boring, and you end up anxiously counting down Good strikeouts with a mountain of paper K printouts, just so you can get back to the parking lot to shotgun Keystones. The probable matchup with North Carolina carries the most sex appeal, if only because JMU has some noteworthy postseason history with the Tarheels.
And the Tarholes thought a wildfire would let them off the hook from having to get beatdown in the 'Burg?! 😂😂😂😂
All you need to know about the Harrisonburg regional is that JMU is a -600 favorite to advance to the Super Regional, while the field is +400. And speaking of odds...
A Sure Bet... if you've got $5,000. At several online sportsbooks, you can actually bet the NCAA softball tournament. As of this posting, only lines for the first crop of regional games have been posted, which means that only JMU vs Princeton is available. To win $100, you'd have to bet $5,250 on JMU. That's a hard square bet, simply because the up-front money is so high, but it's about as close to a guaranteed Franklin as you're likely to find in gambling.
(Also of note -- JMU is the second-biggest favorite on the board, behind only Tennessee at -7500. Though when you consider that Florida has been taken off the board altogether for its opener vs Alabama State, the Dukes would likely be the third-biggest favorite on a full board.)
Similar story, different ending. Last year, JMU softball hosted a regional, but got tripped up by an unexpectedly good NC State squad. Expect an undercurrent of measured expectation, and a predictable narrative arc of senior redemption.
For all the literary cliches, though, this team has earned the praise it's garnered. They've obliterated almost every team they've played; the only conference loss they took was a 15-inning marathon game against a capable Elon team. (I have to imagine that, after a game that's more than twice the length of a normal match, players on both teams would have been happy to surrender, just to get off the field.)
When you combine the relatively weak competition that's headed for the Harrisonburg Regional and the dominance that JMU has pitched with, it's a fairly safe bet to look forward to what could potentially be in the Super Regional. Which is...
Purple and Gold v. Purple and Gold. If seeding holds, JMU will host LSU -- yes, that LSU -- in Harrisonburg at the Super Regional level. I'm prepared to make the argument that this would be the biggest home game in the history of JMU athletics.
I'm getting an anticipatory buzz just thinking about a JMU-LSU softball super-regional tailgate.
But to get there, the Dukes have to take care of business Friday, Saturday, and Sunday against a crop of beatable teams. The forecast is calling for rain on Saturday, but who the hell cares? JMU Athletics saved the best for last this year. Get out there and watch some history. The WCWS is waiting.
In my head, I have a complicated relationship with Everett
Withers. He's clearly a gifted hype man, the sort of guy you'd want spotting
you on the bench press or pumping you up in the corner of a boxing ring in
between rounds. He's got some pretty neat slogans. He can string letters and
numbers together with the best of them. He's got a knack for hash tags.
And in all seriousness, Withers
was much-needed cough medicine. Bitter to the taste, but otherwise
curative of what ailed JMU. The culprit in this particular case? The locker room
behind the south end zone got a little too stale, just a little too complacent,
under Mickey Matthews. It's football. It happens. And Withers' extra pep in his
step fixed those problems, come what may.
But let's call this what it is. It's a shitty, savvy business
decision from someone who's too smart to get exposed this early in his career.
In the stock trade, you buy low and sell high. Your moves are dictated by the
arc you feel your stock is on. When you're in a business like coaching,
decisions are made along the same rubric. He may be coming off back-to-back
playoff losses as a home favorite, but Withers' stock was arguably at peak
height. He gets the credit for landing an ACC quarterback transfer. He gets the
credit for centering that quarterback in a video game offense. He gets the credit for
bringing College GameDay to an FCS school.
You sell high on that. It's that simple. All the other details, like the alumni love and the media disconnect? That doesn't matter. It's a cutthroat business, and this is a cutthroat business decision. Fans line up to make excuses for him here; he could be a god. But to him, that FBS head-coaching tab is more important, in the grand scheme of things.
I'm not going to break this down for you guys much further
than that. By now, the Withers-to-Texas-State news is already almost 24 hours old, and the
Internet has had plenty of time to digest the facts and spew up a football
field’s worth of frothy hot takes.
What is undeniably horrible here is the timing. Coaching
departures are just part of the business, but leaving a few weeks before
National Signing Day, and six days after tweeting about how thrilled you are to
bring in a top-tier recruiting class, is objectively shitty.
Past that, all that's left are the I-Told-You-So's. I try
not to do this too much of that, because nothing is more annoying than a guy rubbing it
in your face when you're already low. But back when I was writing columns for
the Breeze, I penned this prophetic masterpiece:
"Matthews and his staff can’t be absolved of all
responsibility. The lack of a forward passing game at JMU has become so
publicly mocked, it’s nearly cliché. Calling plays out of the shotgun in short
yardage situations has become a regularity. The defense, for all its talent,
simply couldn’t cover anyone, and incomplete passes were often a result of
happenstance rather than actual defensive prowess.
Most damningly, the offense failed to develop an identity
as quarterbacks were shuffled and reshuffled like so many decks of cards. Mix
in the option, the wildcat, zone-reads and numerous other play calls, and it’s
unclear whether JMU oversees a football team or a Bertie Botts Every Flavored
Bean factory.
As a result, CAA blogs and message boards are full of
snide young alumni, living in their Northern Virginia lofts, parading on about
how Matthews should be fired immediately. I think they should get back to their
cubicle and concentrate on their spreadsheets. Inducing a coaching panic is the
last thing the program needs right now.
While the expectations weren’t met and the class of 2013
will graduate without a home playoff game, Matthews deserves his fan base’s
trust. I’m not a believer in national championships buying free
rides, but there just isn’t enough here to trade an admirably devoted coach
Matthews for some young up-and-comer who will only see JMU as a stepping stone."
I don't think I'm lobbying for us to send Mickey an offer sheet or anything, but I do feel a little bit like Alfred in The Dark Knight. Walking out
of my secret underground shed where I write this blog, like, yeah, but I did
bloody tell you.
Look, it's going to get worse before it gets better. JMU is going to lose recruits. And the more recruits that decommit and depart, the more enticing it's going to be for other recruits to jump ship, too. There's a certain element of self-sustaining chaos that will be in play over the next few weeks, until a hire is made and the athletic department can stop the bleeding.
#TXST COMMIT: 6'3", 208-lbs safety Kumonde Hines out of Chesterfield, VA. Flipped commit from James Madison to #TXSThttps://t.co/ap61G1oYxJ
The good news is that, after briefly talking with a couple of people this afternoon, I feel reassured that there is an actual plan in motion, and not just crisis communication, control-the-narrative bullshit. JMU is aggressively pursuing people, and it doesn't seem like anyone is off limits. (Seriously, though, stop holding your breath for Chip Kelly, because that shit just isn't happening.)
Master plan unfolding. Lovie Smith was just fired by the Bucs about 38 seconds ago. Chip Kelly can't wait to bring him on staff at JMU.
I suppose I'll end with one final thought on Everett Withers, before he goes in the sin bin with the rest of the sports unmentionables. I'm reminded of the Michael
Jordan commercial where MJ speaks to a few dozen aspirational teenagers,
looking for insight into how to be better.
"Maybe it's my fault," Jordan says. "Maybe I
led you to believe my game was built on flash, not fire."
Jordan's voice trails off.
"Or maybe, you're just making excuses."
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've misjudged Everett. Maybe he's
more than a good-not-great coach who was gifted a one-in-a-million quarterback
situation. Maybe he let me believe his talents were more throat than brain.
Then again, I haven't been wrong yet. And today, in
Harrisonburg, nobody is making excuses for Everett Withers any longer.
