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(02/12/09 6:37am)
That thumping you heard last week? Right around 1 in the afternoon? That was the collective jumping for joy of Wahoo football fans across the globe.One week ago was national signing day, and we have plenty of reason to celebrate.Various recruiting rankings put our class between fourth and sixth in the ACC and in the low 30s nationally. Compare that to the 2008 class, which was rated the conference’s 11th best — ahead of only Duke.As I’ve said in this space before, this class has the potential to be one of our best in years. No, it doesn’t vie with Alabama or Florida or USC for the best in the country, but it got us what we needed. And say what you will about game-planning or play-calling — Groh et al. have proven their ability to take middling talent and build it into pro-level performers.So just what are these goodies? What man-beasts will grace Grounds in the coming years? Well, come with me on what I’ll call Wiley’s Wild Recruiting Recap: MORGAN MOSES (Offensive Tackle; Meadowbrook High School; Richmond)The crown jewel, the coup de grace, the whipped cream and the cherry on Virginia’s recruiting sundae.Some numbers: No. 2 recruit in Virginia; No. 5 offensive tackle in the country; 6 feet 7 inches tall; 347 pounds; benches 380; squats 460.Moses turned down offers from Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Tennessee and that other ACC “school” in Blacksburg. On signing day, his commitment was an 11th-hour decision to come to Charlottesville instead of Knoxville or Chapel Hill.To watch his highlight films is to watch near perfection. His pass blocking is airtight, and he’s de-cleated more than his fair share of defenders on running plays. His knee and backbend — crucial to a lineman’s ability to get low and win the leverage game — could improve, but that will come with coaching.Picking up Moses is almost certainly attributable to the hiring of Latrell Scott. Scott was the lead recruiter at Tennessee before coming to Charlottesville, and it’s hard to imagine Scott’s change of scenery not influencing Moses to follow him along for the ride. If this is what he’s done in two months, get excited for the next few years.Moses is the latest installment to O-Line U. Seeing as how we’ve produced Elton Brown, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Branden Albert and Eugene Monroe — all in the last five years — hopefully the nation’s elite linemen are taking notice. We stand on the verge of becoming what Penn State is to linebackers or what USC of the 1970s and 1980s was to running backs. ODAY ABOUSHI (Offensive Tackle; Xaverian High School; Brooklyn, N.Y.)Another wicked impressive commitment to the line. While not as overwhelming as Moses is on film, Aboushi has more than enough clips to drool over. Standing 6-foot-6 and tipping the scales at 300 pounds, he and Moses could make for a devastating bookend combo. Aboushi turned down offers from Boston College, Iowa, Rutgers and Maryland, committing to the Cavaliers in early January. He also boasted a 3.4 grade point average in high school.The No. 3 recruit in New York and the No. 23 tackle nationally, Aboushi will augment a line that saw several departures, and he could push players in front of him for playing time as the season gets underway. Like Moses, he needs some work on getting lower in his stance, but given what he’s done even with subpar technique, Orange Nation should get used to seeing wide-open running lanes behind Aboushi’s wide frame.QUINTIN HUNTER (Quarterback, though his position next year is still undecided; Orange High School; Orange, Va.)Like Aboushi, Hunter committed early to Virginia — all the way back in March 2008. Ranked No. 12 in the state and the No. 22 best athlete in the class of 2009, Hunter is a 6-foot-2 scrambling quarterback. Other schools that vied for his arm were West Virginia, Maryland, Stanford and Tech.Hunter is the only player in the incoming recruiting class I’ve seen with my own two eyes, and trust me: He’s worth every one of the four stars in his Rivals rating. Playing for coach John Kayajanian, he’s well-versed in the particulars of the spread offense and is an extremely capable runner with what would be fairly assessed as below average throwing ability. As much as I wish he hadn’t, when he played Charlottesville, my alma mater, Hunter made opposing defenses look like they had forgotten to come in off the sidelines.Hunter’s predecessor at Orange, Bradley Starks, is now a wide receiver and quarterback at West Virginia and could vie for the spot the electric Pat White currently occupies. Hunter fits well in that style of game and should enjoy quite a bit of playing time in Gregg Brandon’s offensive scheme. Whether as a quarterback or more a Percy Harvin-style playmaker, this is a kid that needs to be on the field.TIM SMITH (Wide Receiver, Oscar Smith High School; Chesapeake, Va.)Smith is another example of Groh’s coaching staff conducting a well-targeted recruitment drive. Losing Kevin Ogletree, Maurice Covington and Cary Koch put a sizeable dent in the Cavaliers’ receiving corps, and Smith should help fill that void. The No. 10 recruit in Virginia and No. 38 national receiver, the 6-foot, 180-pound Smith turned down a number of pass-first offenses, including Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina squad, to come to Virginia. Like Aboushi, Smith sported a respectable 3.5 GPA in high school. DOMINIQUE WALLACE (Running Back, Fullback; Chancellor High School; Fredericksburg, Va.) Wallace is a freak. No two ways about it — just a freak of nature in football pads. Despite a frame more than 6-feet tall and 230-pounds heavy, Wallace runs a 4.48 forty, the fourth fastest of any 2009 Virginia commitment. Oh, and he squats 500 pounds. His highlight reel was clip after clip after clip of hapless defenders catching a knee or arm to the face mask and slipping harmlessly to the turf. Wallace is rated the No. 1 fullback in the country and the No. 8 recruit in the Commonwealth. Beyond the five studs profiled here, the class includes a 6-foot-6 wide receiver, a running back with 4.4 forty speed and even a Canadian defensive end. Time will be the ultimate test of the Class of 2009, but for now at least — in this, our winter of athletic discontent — the future looks bright.
(02/04/09 5:47am)
I really want to make fun of Michael Phelps.I really do. Not for having a jaw the size of a 1958 Studebaker or arms longer than most species of mammal are tall. No, that would be too easy. And besides, when a man wins 14 gold medals, putting down his physical attributes doesn’t seem to make too much sense.But pictures surfaced last week that show the world’s only human amphibian apparently going for the Acapulco gold: While at a party at the University of South Carolina, Phelps was caught on camera, mid-bong pull.As expected, the public outcry has been swift and profuse. ESPN, CNN and the rest of the alphabet soup, cable news networks have each taken turns having a go at him. “How dare he,” they say. “How dare this 23-year-old act his age!”It would be fun to take part in the Phelps bashing. It would make for an easy 750 words to lambast him in soaring rhetoric and caustic vitriol. But the fact of the matter is: so the heck what?Call me when it’s a picture of him doing steroids or performance enhancers. I’ve known a pot smoker or two in my time, and none of them are going to win a gold medal or set a world record in anything other than the 100-Cheetos Freestyle.This is a non-issue created entirely by the madding crowd that is sports mega-media. NBC needed a marketing ploy and found it in the humble, quiet kid from Baltimore who happened to swim better than any human ever has. The sports world was complicit, running Phelps countdowns, Phelps highlights and Phelps interviews until its screens nigh on to melted.And just when they thought they’d milked every last penny out of their fin-footed cash cow, he makes one mistake. For just a brief moment, he wasn’t the “Savior of All Things Good and Righteous” in sports and was a college-age kid at a party. For just a brief moment, he let his guard down, and some preening greedy frat star of a gamecock whipped out a cell phone to make a quick buck.Should he have done it? No. The guy uses his lungs to make his living, and corporate sponsors pay his rent. So far, Phelps has gotten lucky and avoided the tidal wave of desertion Kobe Bryant did in the wake of his “encounter” in Colorado. Omega watches and Speedo, two of Phelps’ biggest sponsors, have publicly announced that they plan to stand by him.But to imply a moral shortcoming on Phelps’ part is downright idiotic. Celebrating like he did in 2004, by getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of his SUV, was dumb and a thousand different kinds of wrong. He jeopardized the life of everyone else who was on the road that night and was appropriately chided, both in the courts and in the media.The only person in danger when Phelps put that bong to his mouth was him. His humility, sportsmanship, hard work and competitive drive still make him a role model, no less so than he was six months or even six days ago. While he has benefited from being in the public spotlight, saying he has to live there every moment of every day is backward, asinine and wrong.All of the ticked-off, disappointed suburbanite parents out there, who have ducked the hard work of parenting by putting Phelps on a pedestal and simply saying, “Be like him”: Get over yourselves. He did the adult thing: apologizing for an unwise decision. Use the opportunity to teach your kids something about accepting responsibility and the consequences of making bad decisions. But don’t cast Phelps down with the unclean.I won’t go so far as some have and say Phelps was acting in some manner of civil disobedience. As dumb as marijuana laws may be, I feel confident saying Phelps wasn’t striving to bring about social justice. He was getting high, plain and simple. Giving that any greater meaning, for better or for worse, is disingenuous and empty.At the end of the day, this is one kid, making one pretty subpar judgment call. Try as the moral zealots may, it isn’t indicative of an erosion of the American conscience, nor of the arrogance of the American athlete. Hopefully, their horrendous hubbub will die down soon.
(01/28/09 5:33am)
This past Saturday, N.C. State women’s basketball coach Kay Yow died at the age of 66, ending a bout with cancer that began in 1987.Yow was N.C. State’s first head coach and led them to the ACC’s first women’s basketball title in 1978. In her 34 years at the helm in Raleigh, she won more than 700 games, the third-winningest women’s head coach in NCAA history.For more than 20 years, Yow fought as hard as anyone could against breast cancer. She took time out of the hectic life of being a college basketball coach to speak out and educate the public. She was a tireless fundraiser and advocate for cancer research, her on-court tenacity spilling over into what was, without hyperbole, the fight of her life.Unfortunately, hers is a story seen all too often, both in sports and in our everyday lives. In 2008, more than 560,000 Americans died of cancer and more than 1.4 million were diagnosed with some form of it. In Virginia alone, the past year brought 35,000 new cases of cancer, and almost 14,000 deaths.It’s a disease that has somehow cut through to virtually everyone. For me and my family, it was losing my grandmother when I was in middle school, then my grandfather beating it into remission only a few years later. The same day Coach Yow passed, more than 700 people showed up at Westminster Church on Rugby Road to honor the life of Jack Blackburn, the University’s longtime dean of admissions and an influential mentor of mine.Our own women’s basketball coach, Debbie Ryan, has stared down this demon before, beating pancreatic cancer into remission after being diagnosed in 2000. Though Ryan and Yow were rivals and competitors for almost 30 years, Ryan credits Yow as being “the soul of our coaching group in the ACC.”For N.C. State, this is a story athletes have seen and lived before: a beloved coach, a protracted fight against cancer and a life ended far too soon. Jim Valvano coached the Wolfpack men’s team for the entirety of the 1980s, winning multiple ACC titles and the 1983 NCAA championship. He died in 1993 — only 47 years old.Between his retirement from coaching in 1990 and his death three years later, Valvano was a renowned motivational speaker. If you haven’t seen his acceptance speech at the 1993 ESPYs, when he received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, get on YouTube and find it now.That night he had to be helped on and off the stage by Dick Vitale and Mike Krzyzewski, yet he stood and delivered one of the greatest orations of what it means to be involved in sports and what it means to lead a fulfilled life. His speech made the audience live his advice: Each day we should think, we should laugh and we should cry. If you do those things, he said, “that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”But beyond just its rhetorical power and sage advice, his speech endures because it included the announcement of the founding of the V Foundation for Cancer Research. For the last 15 years, the V Foundation has been a star warrior in the fight to stop cancer. Each year it puts on numerous sports-related awareness and fundraising events, including two tournaments in Madison Square Garden.The V Foundation is but one of hundreds of cancer-related organizations in this country. While they may have different names and different logos and slogans, they all have the same common endgame in mind: stop this beast of a disease dead in its tracks.In a country with so many universities and hospitals and research facilities, there’s no reason we can’t beat this. But the scientists and doctors in labs can’t win the fight alone. They need energetic and focused people to speak up for the war they’re waging. In both the public and private spheres of life, the fight to beat cancer needs more advocates.So find a way to get involved. For your birthday or Christmas or whenever your family gives gifts, pass on the things and the stuff, and ask your family to make charitable donations in your name. Send them to jimmyv.org. Have them watch the speech and read the stories.Do it for Coach V and Coach Yow. Do it for the Jack Blackburns and Eva Mae Owens Wileys in your life. This is too important to sit on the sidelines. This is the time to get in the game.
(01/14/09 5:00am)
Best. Christmas. Ever.There, under the tree all bedecked in orange and blue, lay the gift we’d all been waiting for. Even better, we got to open it a few days early.No, not a Wii, not a new bike, but Virginia football’s leap into the 21st century.While most of us were away on break, Al Groh & Co. announced the hiring of Gregg Brandon to replace Mike Groh as the football program’s offensive coordinator. Brandon had been the head coach at Bowling Green, where he had previously served as offensive coordinator for Urban Meyer.Yes, that Urban Meyer. Two-time national title-winning Urban Meyer. Recruited Percy Harvin and Tim Tebow Urban Meyer. King Genius of the Spread Offense Urban Meyer. Brandon and Meyer built the spread from the ground up. They took elements of the run and shoot, the wishbone, the old triple option, basically every one of the most lethal offenses the game had ever seen, and made a new beast. They built a Frankenoffense and jolted it to life.While Brandon was designing the offense and calling the plays, Bowling Green averaged close to 500 yards and 40 points a game. Forty points. The 2008 Virginia squad didn’t score 40 points in its first four games. Combined.Brandon’s offense is a perfect complement to the pro-style 3-4 defense Groh favors: When run correctly, both are fast-paced, aggressive systems. With former linebackers coach Bob Diaco moving to the booth as defensive coordinator, we should see a defense that gets after the opposition and tees up our offense for success.But as Billy Mays would say, that’s not all. Brandon was a great catch, but the true jewel in the net might be the Hoos’ new wide receivers coach, Latrell Scott. Scott played at Hampton, then coached at Richmond and Tennessee, and built a reputation as one of the best recruiters of Virginia talent.Scott’s recruiting skills may be what truly make the difference during the next few seasons. Year after year, most of the top recruits in the commonwealth have ended up at Virginia Tech, especially the athletes from the Tidewater area. Brandon needs athletes for his spread, and Scott can go get them.We may not even have to wait a year to see Scott’s impact. This year’s top recruit from the Old Dominion is Morgan Moses, a 6-foot-7, 347-pound man-monster at left tackle. Rivals.com has him as the No. 1 best tackle and the No. 1 best offensive lineman in the country. Among his final schools are Virginia, Virginia Tech and Tennessee. His lead recruiter for the Tennessee Vols? Latrell Scott.Last year’s offseason was one in which virtually all of the wheels came off at the same time for this program. This year, the pieces seem to be coming back into place. Quarterback Jameel Sewell spent his time on academic suspension getting his grades and life together, tutoring in Charlottesville schools and serving as an assistant coach for Charlottesville High School. As a result, he’ll be back on the field next season; signs indicate suspended defensive back Chris Cook will be, as well.Sewell should fit Brandon’s system like a glove. He’s tall, standing at 6-foot-3, he’s athletic and he showed great strides in developing his option reads during the 2007 season. The version of the spread Brandon showed off at Bowling Green required a playmaker at quarterback who could distribute the ball effectively. Long plays generally developed at the line of scrimmage, option pitches or wide receiver screens that broke for 20 yards or more. Sewell isn’t the best long-ball thrower in the country, but neither was Omar Jacobs, who did well enough playing for Brandon that he was the odds-on favorite for the Heisman at the start of his senior season.I’ve used this space several times before to go after Coach Groh. I was frustrated by the string of discipline problems and by an approach to offense that seemed to lack ingenuity. So I want to be the first to say this: Well done, Coach.Firing your son couldn’t have been easy. Nor, I imagine, was firing two more assistants. But you admitted the program needed a new direction and went out and got the pieces the puzzle had been missing. Even if the pressure to bring change came from powers higher up than the football offices — perhaps even higher up than the athletic department — you took the challenge in stride and delivered back-to-back home runs.Now take us where you promised. By adding the World’s Coolest Offense and an up-and-coming young recruiter, the talent to bring conference titles and national prominence is well within your reach; talent that fits your mantra of smart, tough and focused. Go get ‘em, keep them on the straight and narrow once they get here, and show us something.
(12/04/08 7:06am)
Nov. 29, 2003. Virginia 35, Virginia Tech 21.That day five years ago is the last time the Hoos bested the Hokies in football. That day is separated from this one by 1,831 and one-fourth days (yay leap years).What were you doing Nov. 29, 2003? For me, it was two weeks after my 16th birthday; it would be another three months before I even got my driver’s license. For most of you graduating this year, it was your junior year of high school.President-elect Barack Obama was then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, still 3.5 months from winning the Democratic primary for his U.S. Senate seat. U.S. Senator-elect Mark Warner was still governor of the commonwealth, and Congressman-elect Tom Perriello had just finished helping to depose an African dictator.Topping the Billboard charts was “Baby Boy,” by Beyoncé featuring Sean Paul, and “Bad Santa” — starring Billy Bob Thornton, Bernie Mac and the late John Ritter — had just opened in theaters across the country. Unfortunately, I’ve heard the first; thankfully, I’ve never seen the second.Prominent in the news that week were President Bush’s surprise Thanksgiving visit to troops in Iraq, the relaunching of the USS Cole after completion of repairs and the resignation of Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze. OK, that last one wasn’t all that prominent, but hey, it happened.In 1,831.25 days, you could have climbed Mt. Everest 26 times. You could have circumnavigated the globe, following the same timeline and itinerary as Ferdinand Magellan — and have two years to spare. If you were able to maintain Andy Green’s world land-speed record of 763 mph the entire time, you’d have logged enough miles to go around the equator 1,346 times — though you probably would have had to stop for gas.Since Nov. 29, 2003, 10 teams have beaten the Hokies, including Boston College thrice, and Miami and Florida State two times each. Because Tech joined the ACC in 2004, we have never beaten the Hokies in football when a conference game was on the line.The same story doesn’t translate to almost any of Virginia’s other sports. Besides a 13-6 edge in softball, Virginia Tech trails in every other sport. In women’s soccer, the maroon and orange were 0-5 until this year’s two close upsets, and in baseball, the Hokies have managed to post a big, whopping goose egg, going 0-10 on the diamond. And they don’t even have men’s lacrosse, so I guess that’s Them 0, Us Infinity.But perhaps it’s the talent to blame. Surely with such a streak of on-field success, the better players have always won out. They were just plain better, so there’s no reason to complain.In the NFL Drafts from 2004 — to include those who played in the 2003 Virginia victory — to 2008, Hoos have been picked in the first round four times. Only three Hokie players have been picked during that same span. DeAngelo Hall went at No. 8 in the 2004 draft, the highest position of any Tech player during those five drafts. Virginia’s D’Brickashaw Ferguson was No. 4 in 2006, and super-freak Chris Long was this year’s No. 2.Aside from the headliners, the average draft data sorts out about the same. Of the 28 Tech players taken, the average draft round was early fourth, the average pick 122nd. For the 18 Cavaliers, the round was the same, the average pick only 10 spots lower.If it isn’t the players, what about the coaches? That may well be one source of the problem. For Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, he’s had the same two coordinators for several years: Bryan Stinespring on offense and Bud Foster on defense. Both were there, in those positions, in 2003, and both are still there today.Here in Charlottesville, however, we’ve faced a coaching carousel. In 2003, Ron Prince was the offensive coordinator, and Al Golden ran the defense. Both left in 2005, handing the offensive reins to Mike Groh and the defensive controls to Mike London. London then took his current position at the University of Richmond, and Bob Pruett stepped into his role. Four new coaches, versus Tech’s status quo.Whatever the reasons, we’ve got to do something, and fast. Our next shot might come as soon as 2,171.5 days since the last win. All of us have a relative or co-worker or, God forbid, a boss who roots for Tech, and it would be really great if after all that time, they’d finally shut up.Two straight classes of Virginia graduates will have never seen a Cavalier victory against the Hokies during their undergraduate years. Rivalries are supposed to have some back-and-forth. Pretty soon, this will just become ritualistic flagellation.So, whoever out there can hear this, take the lessons of this year to heart. Call it the Wildhoo, the Hoocat, whatever, just use somebody who can make it work again next year. We had Tech on the ropes. Next year, let’s finish the job. Fingers crossed, it’ll happen before my 13-year-old cousin is old enough to celebrate with a beer.
(11/12/08 9:12am)
It’s officially sweater weather. I’m trading in my shorts and sandals for slightly warmer wear. The rich spectrum of fall foliage now lines the streets instead of the skyline, and I actually had frost on my car the other morning. The return of the chill means only one thing.Basketball is back.Midnight Madness has come and gone, the last exhibition games are winding down, and I’m seeing less and less of my basketball manager friends. In only four days, our Hoos kick things off at JPJ against the high-octane VMI Keydets.But this column isn’t about what to watch for this season in Charlottesville. It’s not about how the Hoos will cope in the first season post-Singletary or which young guns and newcomers will contribute the most this year. It almost was, until I checked the schedule for the EA SPORTS Maui Invitational.I love the Maui Invitational. Coach K and Tom Izzo in Acapulco shirts and leis, the nation’s most elite players squaring off in a gym that’s smaller than the ones most of them had in high school — it’s quite a spectacle and a great kick-off to the season. But there is one game in particular this year that I can’t wait to watch, even if I am rooting for 10 broken legs and a 0-0 tie:UNC versus Chaminade.My disdain for both these schools knows almost no bounds. It’s genetic, I guess, something I inherited from Dad. We use “Carolina ref” to express our displeasure with anything from blown calls to bad traffic. Since before I was born, Chaminade has been paired, in my household, with the same epithet Bucky Dent receives in Southie.Why Chaminade, you ask? (Presumably immediately after “Chami-who?”) What could the Silverswords of the NCAA’s Division II possibly have done to incur such wrath? The answer, my friends, lies way back in 1982.It was the Year of Ralph. Behind the gargantuan Ralph Sampson, the reigning national Player of the Year and recipient of the Naismith Award, our Hoos had knocked off Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown and the immortal Phi Slama Jama dynasty at Houston. Rick Carlisle and Othell Wilson formed a backcourt duo among the best in the country, quick sharpshooters who kept defenses honest and off of Sampson inside.Head coach Terry Holland had taken the boys across the Pacific, all the way to Tokyo, to play in an early season tournament that showcased just how good the defending ACC regular-season champions were. On the way back home, they were scheduled for a stop in Hawaii to take on an NAIA team from a school with only 800 students: Chaminade.In the weeks before the game, university officials had been discussing the envelopment of Chaminade into the University of Hawaii system. But in one night, during the course of one 40-minute game, all that changed.Sampson had anywhere from 8 inches to a foot on the players covering him. Thing was, there were three or four of them every time he turned around. Chaminade’s “secret weapon” was a Virginia product who had played Sampson in high school. For one perfect storm of a game, the Hoos couldn’t hit their outside shots, and Chaminade couldn’t miss. When all was said and done, Chaminade 77, Virginia 72.Throughout the years, explanations for what happened that night have trickled in by bits and pieces. One is that Ralph had the flu or some other illness that he’d picked up in Japan. Another says a few players had enjoyed the Hawaiian nightlife a bit too much and were sluggish the next day. Who knows, maybe Holland picked up a cursed Tiki doll on the beach.Whatever the reasons, whatever the excuse, that game will live in infamy as the greatest upset in the history of college basketball. Watch the Maui tournament. Without fail, they’ll make reference to the biggest win in Chaminade’s history, the game that is the very reason the tournament exists at all.In terms of purely a basketball game, all history aside, Carolina versus Chaminade shouldn’t be much of a game. UNC has Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough, winner of 11 national Player of the Year awards, including the Naismith. Its backcourt is stacked: Bobby Frasor, Danny Green, Wayne Ellington, and Ty Lawson all return from last year’s squad. They’re the first unanimous AP preseason number one ever. They were ACC regular-season champions last year, and everyone expects the same, if not more, from them this year.Sound familiar?
(11/05/08 9:36am)
“For when the One Great Scorer comes,To write against your name,He marks — not that you won or lost —But how you played the game.”— Grantland RiceNever in the history of sports has a writer so succinctly and poetically summed up the essence of sports on a higher plane than that of the playing field. He’s the same man who penned “The Four Horsemen” as the moniker for Notre Dame’s 1924 backfield and a journalist Al Groh should look up.We’ve gone from distasteful to embarrassing. I’ve written about it before and hoped to never have to write about it again, but what once were discipline “issues” have now become a full-blown epidemic.Rashawn Jackson’s arrest on charges of breaking and entering and, even better, grand larceny, makes him the sixth Cavalier football player arrested since the end of the 2007 season. He follows in the ignoble footsteps of Mike Brown, J’Courtney Williams, Dave Roberts, Will Barker and Peter Lalich.While the charges against Barker were later dismissed and Jackson still does have a court date Nov. 20 to prove his innocence, this chain of fools is downright disgusting. That stench that’s turning my stomach no longer wafts up from Tallahassee, Fla., Miami, Fla. or Blacksburg, Va., but rather from right under our own noses. Ultimately, the buck has to stop somewhere, and I have a good idea which sweatshirt to pin it on.One of the distinguishing features between the NFL and college football is the amount of control coaches have over the players who enter their programs. In the pros, an owner or general manager can make a personnel decision over a coach’s head and bring in a Pacman Jones. But in the college ranks, the head coach targets, recruits and signs every last player to come through the door, either directly or through his assistants.So when one of those players screws up, some of the blame can shift onto the coach. Certainly he can’t be with every player, everywhere, all the time, but we do expect the coach to instill enough of either respect or fear to keep his players on the straight and narrow.But when it’s as many as six players, or 10 in Groh’s case if you count academic suspensions and dismissals, almost all of the blame comes back to the top of the pile. Double-digit screw-ups in a single season aren’t a bad apple or two. It’s indicative of a culture of complacency, in which character is seen as a vice, not a virtue.On top of the actions themselves is the attitude of this coach, these players and this athletic department as a whole. After this paper broke the story of Lalich’s probation violation, I received a highly passive-aggressive message from Lalich himself, “congratulating” me on the story while continuously asserting a lack of any wrongdoing. When we asked why Lalich played that week in the postgame press conference, Groh bristled at the audacity of our reporter to question why someone who voluntarily admitted to violating his probation still got to represent the Orange and Blue and then said those reporting on the matter should “examine themselves.”Days later, the athletic department trotted Lalich in front of the assembled media to express their solidarity with him and let him, again, assert his innocence. Within 48 hours, they announced he wouldn’t travel to Storrs for the UConn game; within the week following the game, he was off the team. In his court hearing, Lalich admitted verbally what he’d admitted in writing: that he’d been drinking on probation, in clear and direct violation of the terms he’d signed.At the end of the day, the criticisms of Lalich and his actions were correct and had been from the start. But Groh and the athletic department’s brusque treatment of the media’s inquiries into the matter show one of two things: either a complete and utter lack of control and knowledge or a willingness to support a young man’s repeated public lies. Either one is entirely unacceptable.Being the football coach at the University of Virginia is about much more than wins or losses, bowl games or conference championships. An institution of this caliber, with the rich history and tradition of honor that sets it apart from all others, deserves a coach that doesn’t embarrass it at every turn. It deserves a coach that, win or lose, does things the right way.We had one for almost 20 years in George Welsh, a man who single-handedly built this program into national prominence, who led us to what remains our only three weeks atop the national polls and whose 1989 and 1995 teams were ACC co-champions. His play-calling may have been conservative, and he may have picked his nose a bit on national TV, but for all his faults, Welsh never, ever, would have allowed the shenanigans that have now become the vile legacy of the Groh era at the University.It’s time to turn the page. In fact, it’s time to burn the whole dang book. Fire Groh, and fire him now.
(10/29/08 5:57am)
Et tu, NFL?Late last week, news broke that a number of pro football players violated the league’s substance abuse policy. The big-ticket name was New Orleans Saints running back Deuce McAllister, but others included the Williams Wall, Minnesota’s defensive tackle combo of Kevin and Pat Williams.The stain of steroids and other narcotics has already driven Major League Baseball into the shadow of the NFL. America’s pastime is no longer played on the diamond but on the gridiron.Certainly the transgressions of McAllister and others do not even begin to compare to the rampant steroid abuse in professional baseball. When Peter Gammons sums up the history of baseball, he counts the early 1980s through the early 2000s as the Steroid Era. Every record is tainted, be it pitching, hitting, baserunning or fielding.Most famously, of course, is the demise of Barry Bonds. Barry’s fall from grace should be in the Cliff’s Notes for hubris. It began in jealousy as he watched McGwire and Sosa soak up national headlines in their drug-fueled frenzy of a home-run battle, then suffocated his career into a collection of pulled hamstrings and mass public disdain. Yes, the record books say he has hit more home runs than any other player in MLB history. And yes, there’s an argument to be made that even if he was using steroids, so were the pitchers he was hitting off of. But therein lies the problem.Steroids have so thoroughly infested the Game That Ruth Built that even the simplest records are no longer simple. Every accomplishment of the last 20 years will, or at least should be, held in question. We may never know just how deep the parasite burrowed and instead just have to guess from the scars it leaves.So for a football freak like me, even the slightest whiff of steroids near the NFL is enough to trigger sensations of dread and fear.To its credit, the NFL has had a much tougher drug-testing policy than the MLB. The structural setup of the NFL has helped keep the enemy outside the gates for some time as well, while most Major League steroid-users began their habit somewhere in the minors, where tests were even more lax, hoping to get a leg up and a call to The Show, in the NFL, you’re in or you’re out, and if you’re in, you’re tested randomly and regularly.More often than not, the only thing that shows up in football drug tests is the occasional trace of marijuana (paging Ricky Williams?). Occasionally, college prospects will test positive at the combine, like Northwestern’s Luis Castillo, who now plays with the San Diego Chargers, before the 2005 draft. The specter of substance-enhancers that reared its ugly head last week, however, changes the equation entirely.The NFL Players Association needs to learn from the mistakes the baseball players’ union made. The MLB Players Association was so intent on protecting its members that it fought tooth and nail to keep drug testing out of baseball. In doing so, they’ve essentially chucked two decades of baseball history into the crapper.If the NFLPA embraces tougher drug testing and tougher enforcement schedules — not as harsh as the “three strikes” policy in the MLB, but something with real deterrent value — it sends a message that the integrity of the game is professional football’s primary goal. Failing to do so could create a public opinion nightmare. Just ask MLBPA Executive Director Donald Fehr.As athletes get bigger and yet still faster, as they get stronger and yet more agile, questions will invariably linger about whether all accomplishments were achieved with sweat, blood and God-given talent. With a little bit of luck, hopefully football fans will always be able to know the answer is yes.And now, a brief aside to end this week’s installment: Since you’re reading this on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008, Election Day is less than a week away. Go. Vote. The Venable precinct may be a little nuts, but Momma Wiley and many other great volunteers will be there to help make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible.When you do go vote and being an intelligent reader I know you will, keep in mind the new Virginia ban on campaign paraphernalia inside a polling location. If you have an Obama T-shirt, wear a U.Va. sweatshirt over it. If you’re rocking your McCain-Palin buttons, put them in your pocket for the five minutes you’re inside. Tell your friends to be careful about what they wear to the polls and be ready to throw on a poncho in case you forget.That is all. Next week, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
(10/22/08 7:05am)
The revolution is upon us.No, I’m not talking about massive political or social upheaval. I don’t think we’ll see farmers take up arms against the Redcoats anytime soon, and it’s unlikely that any aristocratic Frenchmen will get decapitated.The revolution of which I speak is the dissemination of the spread offense throughout the ranks of college football. What once was a gimmick is now the gold standard, that which measures all else offensive in the game.Seeds of this revolution were sown first on the plains of Nebraska, under the legendary Tom Osborne. His offensive philosophy was simple: Make the defense play from sideline to sideline, get to the corner and get there faster than anyone else. Tommie Frazier was the first dual-threat quarterback, the mold that gave us Kordell Stewart, Akili Smith, Michael Vick and Vince Young.Osborne’s philosophy blossomed across the country with Nebraska’s success. In the Pacific Northwest, at Portland State University, Mouse Davis found in the spread his offensive salvation. By making a defense account for more receivers and backs, Davis discovered he could negate size and strength with speed and precision.For much of the 1980s and ‘90s, major conference teams resisted breaking out of their I-formation norm. This spread thing was just a passing fad they all dismissed or at best something that would work for the Mountain West teams of the world. Never in the SEC or Big Ten could it work, not in such a bruising, smash-mouth conference.But then something strange started happening. Those mediocre teams you schedule for Homecomings and season openers started making games competitive. Even worse, they started winning. Massive, tear-your-limbs-off linebackers were getting blown away by tiny speedster wideouts. Those “video game” offenses were all of a sudden very real, with teams starting to average 40, even 50 points a game.The spread began to trickle into the BCS conferences. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech in the Big 12, Clemson in the ACC, West Virginia in the Big East. That trickle turned into a steady stream. And before too long, the dams gave way.In this season’s inaugural BCS rankings, 12 of the top 15 teams run some variation of the spread. Four of the last seven Heisman Trophy winners have been the quarterback of a spread system. Now that even Auburn and Michigan have left behind their old ways and picked up the spread, we can officially say it’s made it.But the spread is changing more than just the way offense is played. Tommy Tuberville, coach of the Auburn Tigers, said time and again that part of the reason his team was going spread was because it simply couldn’t compete in the recruiting world when it still ran its old-school offense. The best high school players want the system that best shows off their talents, and the spread does exactly that.The recruiting impact of the spread hasn’t been felt more acutely than in Ann Arbor this season. With Rich Rodriguez importing his unfathomably successful offense from West Virginia, Michigan was considered a front-runner in the Terrelle Pryor sweepstakes. But when Pryor decided to opt instead for Jim Tressel’s version of the spread at Ohio State, he left Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in a bind they have yet to get out of this year. Putting Rodriguez’s offense in the hands of former coach Lloyd Carr’s personnel is akin to handing the keys of a Ferrari off to Caveman Bob.Defensive coaches have had to rack their brains for some sort of counterpunch. After two decades of being rocked on their heels, the defensive answer again came from the mid-major conferences like the Mountain West. The offense puts out five receivers? Fine, we’ll send out five defensive backs.Instead of the 4-3 or 3-4, with seven men in the box, teams starting running six-man variations, most commonly the 4-2-5 or the 3-3-5. Safety/linebacker hybrids replaced the Bosworth-esque monsters that once prowled the middle of the field.The offense once designed to take down the big boys has now been taken up by them. Crazy variations, such as Nevada’s pistol formation (think shotgun, but with the running back behind the quarterback instead of beside him), have begun to crop up once more in the same places that gave rise to the modern spread phenomenon. The craziest, though, belongs to Piedmont High School, in Piedmont, Calif.If you think Texas Tech or Hawaii spreads out a defense, picture an offense with 11 eligible receivers.It’s called the A-11 offense and relies on a technicality in the rules originally designed for punt formations. Two quarterbacks line up seven yards behind the center, who is flanked by two tight ends. Dual sets of three wide receivers spread to either side of the field. Run out of the no-huddle, the offense gives defenses exactly zero time to figure out who is eligible and who is covered up by others on the line of scrimmage. Once the ball is snapped, pandemonium ensues as the defense gets bombarded with reverses and options and passing routes.For all the changes and improvements teams make, they keep circling back around the same basic principles Osborne used to raise Nebraska to powerhouse status. An extra wrinkle here or gadget play there all starts from the same basic premise.Speed kills. And you can’t coach speed.
(10/08/08 6:40am)
I hate this fall.Normally fall is my favorite season. There’s a chill in the air, the oppressive humidity of the Virginia summer is nothing but a distant memory, and football is back. Sure, I have to go back to school, but let’s face it, I’m a nerd and I groove on having new stuff to learn.I can’t remember a fall I have looked forward to more than this one. Having worked 60-hour weeks during the summer, my workload was actually going to be lessened once school started back up. More importantly, this was going to be my Texans’ season, the one where we finally burst out of mediocrity and into the national consciousness for a reason other than leading the race for the first overall draft pick.Matt Schaub looked ready to lead. After three years honing his NFL instincts as Michael Vick’s backup in Atlanta and one more getting comfortable with the offense in Houston that pro-level talent was expected to blossom this year. With the double-Andre wideouts (Davis and Johnson), an elite tight end in Owen Daniels and a legit backfield stable of Ahman Green, Chris Brown and Steve Slaton, we were actually going to be able to move the ball.What’s more, we were actually going to be able to stop it too, with three first-round draft picks on the defensive line: Travis Johnson from 2005, Mario Williams from 2006 and Amobi Okoye from 2007. Super Mario had grown from a controversial number one to the dominant rush end the boys in the front office had hoped for, leading the team with 14 sacks last season. His play had changed the course of late-season wins against Denver and Indianapolis at the end of 2007, and there was every reason to believe he’d pick up wreaking havoc right where he’d left off.And like a fool, I bought into it. I was giddy when ESPN the Magazine ran a full-length article on why this was our year. I set the magazine’s cover photo of Mario Williams as the background on my desktop. I picked Matt Schaub as my backup quarterback in my fantasy leagues. I checked the team Web site to watch video updates on training camp every single day. For a while there, I probably would have bled steel blue and battle red.Then we actually had to play some games.First Pittsburgh took its chance to stomp all over my heart and soul. Houston took the opening kickoff, moved the drive up the field, got gypped on a fourth-down conversion at midfield and proceeded to crumble defensively for the next 50 minutes. Final score: 38-17.After Hurricane Ike moved back the Week Two tilt against the Ravens, we were taken to the woodshed at Tennessee. Even without Vince Young, it was another Grand Ole Blowout in Nashville, 31-12.Apparently Jacksonville resented what we did to them in Week 17 of 2007, a 42-28 romp over their backups and second-teamers. After a back-and-forth affair, with the lead changing four times, we tied it up and took it to overtime with a fourth-quarter field goal. It was the best game we’d played all season. Schaub had thrown for three touchdowns and more than 300 yards. But of course, since we wouldn’t want to buck a trend, we lost, 30-27.I can barely talk about what happened this week. I know that talking it out is supposed to be healthy, and that I shouldn’t keep things bottled up inside. But did you watch the game? Did you see what happened? You didn’t? Crap.Schaub didn’t play, but that gave no reason to panic. Sage Rosenfels had played brilliantly in backup situations last year. For 52 minutes, he did so again, staking us out to a 27-10 lead on the great and mighty Colts. For three quarters, Peyton and Marvin and the rest of them looked, at best, average.But that was before Fumble Fest 2K8.In three minutes, Rosenfels turned the ball over three times. The first one, he scrambled on third down, then tried to channel his inner high jumper. Problem is, high jumpers don’t have to carry footballs. Big hit, ball on the ground, Colts recover, Colts score, 27-24.Next possession, since he didn’t learn his lesson the first time, Rosenfels scrambled again, dangling the ball behind him like a steak in front of a lion. Gary Brackett channeled his inner pickpocket, swiped the ball from Rosenfels’s hand like it was Granny’s purse, and before you know it, 27-24. On the last drive, our final shot at salvaging a, Rosenfels threw a pick into what I believe was the one spot on the field with all 11 Colts defenders.Four games, four losses. Not once have we surrendered fewer than 30 points. I think I’m going to hurl.But no matter how bad it gets, I’m going to keep watching. Growing up the son of a Bills and Orioles fan, I’ve learned to take my lumps in stride. Maybe my Texans will circle the wagons and eke out a .500 season. The sky is always darkest before the dawn.Right?
(10/01/08 10:01am)
The more things change, the more they stay the same. What’s old is new again. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.The hubbub about this sign ban has, amazingly, kept its pace even a month into school. It hasn’t suffered the usual fate of the college cause, doomed from the get-go to be tossed aside in favor of some newer, more pressing and oh-so-much more dire crisis. While the blank signs protest wasn’t executed flawlessly in the Richmond game, the fact that there are rumblings of a second protest for Saturday’s tilt against Maryland shows just how deeply this is getting under students’ skin.And I’ve gotta say: I love it.But you may be shocked — shocked, I say — to learn that this isn’t the first time students of our beloved University have had to deal with pressures from the administration when they try to express themselves at a sporting event. Surely not at this school, the very paragon of unchecked intellectual freedom, never wavering from its devotion to Jeffersonian ideals.Yet in the late 1970s, that was very nearly the case.Those were the days when basketball was king at Virginia. The Cavaliers had won what still remains our only ACC men’s basketball championship in spring 1976 on the back of the incomparable Wally Walker. My parents were undergraduates at the time and lived by the mantra, “Football is social, basketball is serious.”Those were the days when students got their tickets by waiting in line, not online. The terrace outside old U-Hall was packed with tents and lawn chairs as early as two weeks before a Carolina or Maryland game — base camp for basketball junkies. Terry Holland, Jeff Lamp and Marc Iavaroni and the rest of the Cavaliers’ hardwood heroes would swing through, bringing pizza and sandwiches to keep morale high. There was no such thing as a casual fan.But that fervor led to the student section getting a little rowdier than was comfortable for the powers-that-were. Referees and opposing teams alike were treated to a barrage of something less than the full vocabulary of the student body. The exact limits of obscene speech is an issue to be settled by courts much higher than those made of parquet, but University officials decided they’d had enough and cracked down.The president at the time, Frank Hereford (more infamously remembered as The Man Who Canceled Easters Weekend), wrote an open letter to the student body in this very publication. His ultimatum was simple, direct, and dire: Clean up your act, or we won’t let you into games anymore.Student response was quick in coming. Instead of griping, students got creative. The next game was against Maryland and its reviled coach, Lefty Driesell, whose most prominent feature (aside from garish plaid jackets and red slacks) was his glistening bald head.The Pep Band took matters into its own hands, arming each student entering the game with a laminated sheet. On one side was a caricature of Lefty, his cheeks puffed out and steam spewing from his ears in cartoon anger, a fuel gauge about to burst superimposed on his ample forehead.On the other side was a list of 50 of the most vile, profane, stomach-turning taunts and jeers the band could concoct. If I were to reprint even one, my editors would show me the door in record time. Suffice it to say, mothers and anatomically impossible acts made several repeat appearances.How did that solve the problem, you ask? Instead of every student screaming a semi-intelligible string of four-letter words, the leaders of the Pep Band would simply hold up a sign with a number on it — let’s say 42. Everyone would look down at his or her sheet, read what was there, and begin chanting “Forty-two! Forty-two!”Hereford wrote another letter the next day, commending the student body on its ingenuity that didn’t sacrifice one iota of fandom.So what’s the moral here? Don’t get mad, get creative. And more importantly, get organized. This is an era of instantaneous information. One clever computer geek can access the grades for an entire program with the click of a button. Facebook pictures and profiles provide more than enough fodder for getting under visitors’ skin. We can come up with something better than “Greivis has a big nose,” or “J.J. sucks” (though both are true).As hard as it may be to stand behind the Cavaliers right now, that’s exactly what has to happen if this sign ban will ever be repealed. Show them that what they’re stifling is, for the most part, beneficial. Show them that we can actually pay attention at a game and make our voices heard at that crucial moment.Show them we’ve still got what it takes.
(09/24/08 5:02am)
Every game in every sport has that moment where you just know it’s over. Whether by destiny or by fate or simply by the arc of history, the impending chain of events will play out by rules higher than those of the competition immediately at hand.For the 37th Ryder Cup, played Sept. 16 to 21 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., Hunter Mahan provided that moment.I’ve never been a big fan of golf. Along with NASCAR, it’s the kind of Sunday TV that’s made for quality napping. I normally watch the Sunday rounds of the big events: the U.S. Open to watch the pros get humbled and scrape home with a par for the weekend; the Masters for the azalea and dogwoods and Amen Corner; and the British Open to watch the game played at ancient St. Andrews or solemn Carnoustie.Despite finding golf on TV only a few notches this side of coma-inducing, I do appreciate the beauty and splendor of the sport. While the boredom stems mostly from my horrid ineptitude at hitting a golf ball and the accompanying admiration of anyone who can hit one well, the visual of white ball on green fairway with a crystal blue sky backdrop is enough to make me care ever so slightly.The Ryder Cup is different though. Especially in an Olympic year, when sports all through the summer have been geared toward fostering the us v. them mentality, this is a competition that presents golf in a whole new way. It’s not one man against the field, the way a normal tournament runs; it’s played as a team, even when the singles matches must be played alone. You must stand with your teammates and hold their success or failure as your own.The Sunday showdown between Mahan and Paul Casey was a microcosm of the weekend as a whole. Starting Friday morning, the Yanks managed to surge to a quick 3-1 lead in the morning matches, then staved off the Europeans through two more rounds of foursomes and four-ball. Almost the entire day Sunday, Mahan had held the lead. Here and there, he’d picked up one hole, now two, now back to one. Mahan and Anthony Kim were the linchpins of captain Paul Azinger’s strategic gamble: In an event where the Sunday singles usually feature experienced, marquee names at the front end, Azinger had sent out two of his rookies.But on hole 16, Casey finally got his break. Mahan floundered in the rough after his approach rolled off the back of the green, while Casey was able to waltz to a birdie to win the hole and bring the match to all square. As the pairing headed to 17, momentum not only was on Casey’s side — it was practically carrying his bags.The tee shots seemed to dig Mahan even deeper: Casey was sitting pretty in the middle of the fairway, while Mahan was toiling from the semi-rough. The approach put Mahan one foot in the grave: he was 40 feet away, Casey half that.Then, the shot.It left Mahan’s putter with the desperation of a half-court try to beat the buzzer. It had too much speed, not the right line; Casey would win the hole and probably the match, and the Europeans would be on their way to another Ryder romp.As Mahan’s ball flew across the green, it came to encounter a nifty little ridge, the kind installed by a course architect that beckons for the U.S. Open, but drives up handicaps of the club’s mere mortal members. The ball played off it more as a ricochet than a break, making a sudden hard right toward the cup.But it still had too much speed. Sure, now the line was good, but at this rate it would just hop on over and all that great shot would be for naught.Front of the cup.Bounce.Back of the cup.In.I exploded off the sofa with an exuberance I usually reserve for football and lacrosse. I clutched the remote in a death-grip and screamed in primal glee as Mahan did the same. The flag-waving crowd produced noise never before heard on a golf course, urged on by Mahan’s wild gesticulations and stomping.Mahan, unfortunately, couldn’t hold his one-up lead and allowed Casey to sneak back and halve the match on 18. But his putt accomplished something more. It fired up the wildly jingoistic crowd and gave it the energy with which it boosted other Americans over the course of the day. Kentuckians Kenny Perry and J.B. Holmes both played masterfully through their respective back nines, the Anthony Kim-to-open gamble paid off, and Jim Furyk sealed the deal with a 2-and-1 victory against Miguel Angel Jimenez.For the first time since the Miracle at Brookline in 1999, the American team members were Ryder Cup champions. Without Tiger Woods and against a European team that was as hot as any collection of players in the world. After nine years of embarrassment, one simple shot meant Azinger & Company could hold their heads up high.Mahan’s putt may not have won his match, but it won the U.S. the Ryder Cup.
(09/17/08 7:00am)
Imagine this: You’re a student at one of the nation’s finest institutions of higher learning. All your life, you’ve been applauded for your intellectual ability. In high school, you probably won lots of awards: science fair, honor roll, debate team.You’re going through college, and the first year was a little rough, but you still did pretty well. Maybe you made the Dean’s List. Regardless, you can feel yourself getting smarter and soaking in more knowledge.Then one morning, your thoughts are just gone. Your mind doesn’t work as fast as it did the day before. You’ve entered some bizarre Kafka-esque world where one simple day has entirely changed the way you look at, feel about and interact with the world.Congratulations. You know what it’s like to be Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young.Most of us will never get the chance to be a world-class athlete. But Vince is one of the lucky few, the chosen. His exploits as a high school recruit and then a Texas Longhorn are the things of legend. No one who watched that Rose Bowl could ever forget how Vince Young beat USC, essentially the 33rd NFL franchise.All that fame and glory can be a curse. When your legions of family and fans hoist you up, when they place you on a pedestal because of your prowess on a field, that’s how you measure your self-worth. And when that talent is gone, what is there left in its place?His is a game built as much on his legs as it is on his arm. He’s been hailed as the quarterback of the future, a torch he carries in Michael Vick’s absence from the game. His mold is now the gold standard of recruit or prospect, the game-changer that’s changing the way offensive football is played.So when he thought those legs were gone and could feel them hobbled by an injury that has since turned out to be less serious than initially thought, he reacted how any of us would. He went to a friend’s house, turned off his phone and tried to just get the heck away from it all for a few hours.The media has turned last week’s mini-manhunt into an absurd referendum on Vince Young’s heart and desire to play football. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that since he’s taken it this hard, he clearly doesn’t have the mental toughness for the week-in, week-out grind of the NFL.Horsefeathers.How would they have preferred him to react? Sit through their inane questioning in a Monday press conference? Spew sound bites about how it’s a setback but he wants to work hard and get back to help his ball club?The claims that even the thought of not being able to play football made Young mention suicide to his therapist tell me something entirely different. It says he’s a young man who has his priorities a little out of wack, but tilted in the direction of too much emphasis on football instead of not enough.Every player knows the risks when he puts on the pads, even all the way back in the first week of two-a-days his freshman year of high school. The horror stories are out there, whether as tragic as the few players killed every year or just your average, run-of-the-mill, four-ligament knee disintegration.Those who play the game as their profession have seen the effects on those who came before: Johnny Unitas, with hands so mangled he couldn’t even write his own name; Iron Mike Webster, the longtime center for Pittsburgh, who suffered from brain injuries caused by a decade of punishment in the trenches.It would seem, then, that the sane, rational reaction to Young’s situation would be to be thankful it wasn’t worse, and that it was “just a knee.” But he’s put so much of himself into this game, wrapped so much of himself into how he plays each Sunday, that the thought of losing a step and sliding onto the too-long list of former promising young QBs laid low by knees and ankles and shoulders unable to withstand professional beatings, unleashed a psychological chain reaction that simply overwhelmed him.He certainly is going to need some help to get back on the field — and from more places than just the training room. A quarterback’s mind can be its own worst enemy, and it’s in both Young’s and Tennessee’s best interests to make sure both body and mind are ready to roll before getting back to business.As someone who’s had to walk away from the game thanks to two serious knee injuries and a blown-out shoulder, I can do more than imagine his emotional pain. For his sake in the long term, I hope he gets the therapy he needs, in all forms.I wish Vince the best of luck, even if that does mean his Titans will beat my Texans for many years to come.
(09/10/08 4:44am)
Over the course of the day Monday, as the rest of the sporting world waited with bated breath for some news about a certain New England player’s knee, a nifty little rumor found its way around the Internet. It snaked through the series of tubes before finding its way to my home page news feed.“Armstrong to compete in Tour de France.”No way, I thought. Can’t be true. He’s getting on toward 40, hasn’t ridden competitively in almost four years and isn’t even dating Sheryl Crow anymore. Surely they mean a different Armstrong, someone with young legs and lungs. It just isn’t possible.But then again, when did impossible last stop Lance Armstrong?Armstrong hasn’t commented on the rumor yet, but I hope it turns out to be nothing more than a cycling magazine’s pipe dream. As great a champion as he was — and as much as I want to watch him roll down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees wrapped in a yellow jersey and a small army of French women — history just isn’t on his side.He should talk to Michael Jordan. His Airness went out on the best note one could ask for, sinking a jumper as time expired to seal his sixth NBA championship. If only that shot had been his last act of fading away.His time in Washington was at the same time sad and bizarre: it was sad to see his aging body unable to support his ageless competitive fire, sad to see him getting overrun and dominated by the role players on other teams and just plain weird to see him in something other than Chicago red and black. The Wizards weren’t able to surround him with the kind of talent he needed, the kind that could win games under his guidance and leadership, and instead of riding off into the sunset, the greatest player of his generation limped away under cover of darkness.If M.J. can’t convince him, there are a string of others Lance could talk to. Try Joe Namath, whose flamboyant career in the NFL ended with him in a Rams uniform, far from his days delivering on his Super guarantee. Or Emmitt Smith, who broke the most heralded record in professional football — the perfect end to a magnificent career in Dallas — and then got greedy and skipped off to Arizona, where he was beat out on the depth chart by Marcel Shipp.More than anyone, Armstrong should look up the end of the career of George Herman Ruth, Jr. The Babe built more than just Yankee Stadium; he put the entirety of baseball on his Goliath shoulders and carried it into the national consciousness. At the end of his career, when he was too old and too slow for the Yankees to keep him, Babe headed back to Boston, where he was the player/assistant manager for the Boston Braves. The team won only 38 games all year, and Babe’s defense was so bad that Braves pitchers threatened to go on strike if he played the field. The Sultan of Swat had been dethroned, and the biggest bang in baseball went out with little more than a whimper.Barry Sanders is the example Lance should follow. In a move never quite forgiven by Lions fans, Sanders shook, rattled and rolled out of Detroit at the peak of his career. The Lions hadn’t managed to win him a ring, but there was no question that another few years would make Barry a stone-cold lock to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He rushed for over 2,000 yards in 1997, only the third player in NFL to break that mark.Barry knew his limits. 1998 saw him rush for 1,491 yards, the first time in five seasons he couldn’t break 1,500. He was only another 1,500 yards from breaking Walter Payton’s rushing record. But he could feel himself losing a step, coming back to the field of mere football mortals, and called it quits before the flame of his dominance sputtered and died.The historical evidence against Armstrong coming back into racing and picking up where he left off is daunting indeed. But maybe recent history tells a different story. Dara Torres showed in Beijing what age and experience can do to youth and skill. The Brett Favre saga has, so far, played out to success in New York.And the sport of cycling has changed in Armstrong’s favor. Assuming all his wins came without the aid of illegal steroids, which the drug tests have supported so far, he was cleanly dominating a sport where virtually everyone else on the road was doing whatever drugs they could find. The biggest names, the ones who could stay within an hour of Lance, have been taken out of the sport by their own “win by any means” stupidity.So maybe it’s possible. If you can overcome the obstacles already placed in Lance’s life path, what’s a little bit of history on top of it?Besides, yellow’s a good color for him.
(09/05/08 8:00am)
Court documents filed yesterday in Charlottesville General District Court confirmed reports that Peter Lalich, starting quarterback for the Virginia football team, has been cited for violating the terms of his probation. Lalich was placed in a pre-conviction probation program earlier this summer after he was arrested for underage possession of alcohol. An anonymous source close to the case reported that the specific violation relates to Lalich’s refusal to take a mandatory drug test. Rich Murray, University associate athletics director for public relations, declined to comment.Lalich’s court date is set for the morning of Sept. 26.
(09/04/08 11:23pm)
Thursday, Sept. 4, 7:30 p.m.: Court documents filed today in Charlottesville General District Court confirmed reports that Peter Lalich, starting quarterback for the Virginia football team, has been cited for violating the terms of his probation. Lalich was placed in a pre-conviction probation program earlier this summer after he was arrested for underage possession of alcohol. An anonymous source close to the case reported that the specific violation relates to Lalich’s refusal to take a mandatory drug test. Rich Murray, University associate athletics director for public relations, declined to comment.Lalich’s court date is set for the morning of Sept. 26.
(09/03/08 8:13am)
Neil Sedaka is wrong. Breaking up isn’t hard to do — at least not with an NBA team.My divorce from the Dallas Mavericks was quick and painless, a Spears-ian annulment that allowed us to go our separate ways. Every cliché was there: We’ve just grown apart; it’s not you, it’s me, by which I mean it actually is you; I never get to see you, but when I do it just isn’t as much fun anymore.It started as nothing serious, a first foray into caring about the NBA. The Mavericks were a novelty team, putting up 120-odd points a game behind a 7-foot German who can shoot the three. Sure, they were known as the ‘allas Mavericks (no D), but dang, they were fun to watch.Over the years, we shared some laughs: the first playoff appearance in 11 years in 2001, getting rid of Raef LaFrentz, the 2006 NBA Finals. There were also tears: Dirk’s knee, handing the Spurs a playoff series, losing Steve Nash, the 2006 NBA Finals.Avery Johnson took what we had to the next level. The feisty little floor general from New Orleans, with his squeaky commands yapping from the sideline, finally made the Mavs a D-fearing team. As a disciple of ACC basketball, raised on defense, defense, defense, I could, for the first time, root guilt-free for my Mavs.Things started heading for the rocks with the six-game implosion against Golden State in the 2007 playoffs. The No. 1 seed, falling to the No. 8? That’s not just losing, that’s failure from top to bottom. For the first time, I saw Nowitzki for what he was: an imported sideshow act who wouldn’t know defense or leadership if it punched him in his oversized jaw.The Devin Harris trade was really the beginning of the end. Here was the young kid who was the future of the franchise, the tough defender and offensive trigger who had survived a baptism by fire in the Southwest Division. He’d single-handedly wrestled a playoff series away from the Spurs — and in only his second season!But away he went, hand-in-hand with two years’ worth of first-round draft picks, for overpriced and over-the-hill Jason Kidd. We were all of a sudden banking on the health of Erick Dampier to make any sort of defensive stops in the frontcourt, a gamble of “put it all on red and spin the wheel” proportions.The coup de grâce, the unforgivable slight, the “saw her with another guy at a romantic French restaurant” moment, was firing Avery. The tension between him and No-heart-zki had been just under the radar for months, a simmering storyline barreling full-speed ahead toward destruction.It was a conflict bound to happen. In one corner, there was little Avery, an undersized, underappreciated scrapper who had carved out his niche through hustle, playing smart and leading hard. In the other was Dirk, an overpaid, overhyped prima donna with little more worth as a person than his scoring average.Dismissing Avery was more than just a regime change. It signaled Mark Cuban’s intent to take the team in a different direction, one painstakingly devoid of unified leadership or passion. These new Mavericks are to be the Yankees of the NBA: a team led by a temperamental, filthy-rich owner who will spare no expense to snatch up aging superstars, sacrificing prospects and homegrown talent for the big-ticket names that sell jerseys in the team store.So, with the separation complete and all ties severed, I’m looking for a rebound. Just a quick fix, someone to hang out with on a Friday night when nothing else is on — but maybe with the potential to turn into something serious. I’ve bounced ideas off some of my friends, and we’ve gotten it down to a few finalists.There are, of course, the Washington Wizards. They have the upside of being the hometown team, which is also their downside. I’m a geographically confused sports fan, and take some perverse pride in my bizarre allegiances. Agent Zero, as Gilbert Arenas is sometimes known, makes for a compelling central figure, but there’s the guilt factor: an all-offense team that I’d have to stop watching around my dad lest he start railing against the no-defense ills of the NBA.“What about the Cavaliers?” one friend asked. Bron-Bron is everything a basketball fan could ask for, the absurdly talented superstar who leads by both example and verbal assault. His stellar defensive play in Beijing was a beautiful sight to behold. But I want to root for a team, not a player, a mistake I made when I picked Dallas because of Dirk.The Magic may be the answer on that front. They’ve got the young stud in Dwight Howard, who is about one year removed from being the most dominant player in the league, and Jameer Nelson is the kind of point guard I’ve been taught to admire. But they have (shudder) J.J. Redick, and though he’ll never play, the wounds are still too fresh from his time at Duke.The sleeper pick in this Fantasy Franchise Draft may well be the Phoenix Suns. Whoever has Sean Singletary at least has to be in the conversation, even if he’s going to be a backup. But there might be just enough Dallas left in me to keep me from turning the corner and rooting for a one-time rival.I guess I’m playing the field, casting out my sports fan net to find another fish in the sea. Suggestions are welcome. Send me an e-mail to support your favorite team (or talk me away from your least favorite). Any particularly convincing, creative or just plain funny arguments may find their way into this space in the future.
(08/27/08 9:39pm)
Saturdays have gotten much more complicated for me.For quite literally my entire life, every Saturday in the fall has been filled with the pomp and circumstance of game day, either at Scott Stadium or huddled around our TV if the Orange and Blue was on the road. I was born Nov. 14, 1987, the day of one of the biggest comebacks in Virginia football history. When the 1988 season started, at nine months old, my parents took me with them to every home game. My greatest sports high came when little Marques Hagans ran circles around — and lofted bombs over — those hated Seminoles.But this year, no mas.For years, the powers that be have treated fans like my parents as if they were below even the most basic consideration. No, they didn’t give thousands of dollars a year to the Virginia Athletics Foundation, and no, they didn’t pony up my college fund to get a luxury box. But they’ve had their seats for almost 25 years. When my parents started coming to games, the tiny gaggle of fans at the stadium sang the “Good Ol’ Song” when we got first downs on our own.Then this year, someone in Bryant Hall cooked up yet another scheme to squeeze more money out of the most faithful fans. For my parents to even have a chance of holding those same seats, they would have to make a certain minimum donation to the VAF, on top of another hike in ticket prices. All of that wouldn’t even guarantee them seats in the same section (and this isn’t 50-yard line; try corner of the end zone).We wonder why Virginia Tech kicks our butt every year. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that their administration has made sure every team stepping into Lane Stadium has to deal with almost 70,000 of the loudest, most rabid fans in college football. They don’t ignore and abuse the fans who, and this may be a novel concept to Virginia fans, actually cheer.But as if that weren’t enough, here come the discipline problems. Thank you, Jameel and Chris for deciding to not go to class, Mike for stealing stereo equipment, J’Courtney for committing credit card fraud, and Will and Dave for stealing drinks from local bars. You’re truly an example for the thousands of kids who look up to Virginia football players and revere them as gods, kids like my cousins, my neighbors and once upon a time, me.When Al Groh first got here, a long, long eight years ago, he emphasized getting players who were three things: smart, tough and focused. The team on the field in 2007 certainly was tough, as anyone who watched our six nail-biting wins can attest. But on the counts of smart and focused, the off-season speaks for itself.While the vehement, vitriolic criticisms of Groh have swirled around the last few years, I’ve bitten my tongue. I never called for his head when he went 5-7; bad seasons happen to good teams. I’ve tried to accept the empty sound bites the man is uniquely able to concoct during any interaction with the media. But it’s just gotten to be too much.Through my life as a Wahoo, I’ve learned to accept certain things about football, the foremost being that we’re going to lose to Tech more times than we aren’t. For the 15 years I’ve been able to form cogent sentences about football, I’ve justified the losses by pointing out that our academic standards are higher, that our recruits have to put more emphasis on “student” than on “athlete.” This is the University of Virginia, one of the most prestigious public institutions of higher learning in the country, home to one of the nation’s oldest honor codes.And Al Groh has thrown that out the window. Since the end of the 2007 season, 10 players have either been left the team because of academic issues or have been arrested by local police. Day by day, Groh’s program is leaving a dark stain on the integrity of our school. Al Groh is looking more like Al Davis, squandering our moral superiority to the Techs and Florida States of the world to “just win, baby.”But what’s worse, schools like Wake Forest have proved that success on the field and integrity in the classroom aren’t mutually exclusive. Wake has the smallest alumni base of any Football Bowl Subdivision team, and yet it has more ACC titles than we do. Just two years ago, with a freshman quarterback and without the services of their best running back, the Demon Deacons went 11-2 and won the conference championship.Jim Grobe and his staff down in Winston-Salem did it by not trying to recruit toe-to-toe with the big boys. They drew up a system that required a specific kind of player, then picked up the smart players bigger schools had overlooked, hand-picking the ones who fit their system. (Grobe doesn’t allow his linemen to report to camp at more than 300 pounds, since his offense requires them to pull and trap.) Imagine: an innovative offense, and smart players that make it work. Must be nice.There are certainly still members of this football program who are getting their job done in both the athletic and academic arenas. They understand their role as student-athletes, and as role models, and perform both admirably. It’s unfortunate that their efforts and accomplishments are overshadowed by the bad apples surrounding them.I’m still going to go to games, don’t get me wrong — my love of Virginia runs too deep to allow myself to stay away come Saturday. Carolina blue will still make me sick to my stomach, and I will never, ever stop hating Tech. But until Groh, or Craig Littlepage, or even the vendors who charge $4.00 for a bottle of water, show they care about the real fans and about restoring the academic integrity that makes this school great, I won’t spend a single minute in sorrow after another all-too-frequent loss.
(08/23/08 6:15am)
For all of you first-years who just finished hugging Mom and Dad goodbye and are now wondering how you got stuck on the top floor of an non-air-conditioned dorm, welcome to the University. For everyone else who is enjoying feeling superior to the first-years stuck in their non-air-conditioned dorms, welcome back.As the sweltering, oppressive, just-plain-nasty heat of August gives way, so do the summer sports doldrums. While I appreciate the reprieve Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt provided from baseball’s trade deadline “drama,” I’ve had enough diving, fencing and rhythmic gymnastics to last me another four years. But thankfully, mercifully, the return of collegians to America’s campuses also means the return of collegiate athletics.I prefer, without apology, college football to its professional counterpart. The staid, over-regulated and over-unionized world of pro sports effectively sterilizes the human drama and neuters real enthusiasm. If Mark Richt were a pro coach and allowed his team to celebrate the way the Dawgs did against Florida last year, he would’ve lost his job instead of just stoking an already fierce rivalry.So while the Manning brothers play chess (yea, sure, we believe that gimmick, NBC) until Monday Night Football returns, I’m chomping at the bit to get back into the swing of the NCAA, in all of its gloriously cheesy pageantry.As a former lineman, and student of the all-time slobber-knocking greats, I look toward football season with an eye toward the big men. If you catch me using the idiotic phrase “skill players” to describe non-linemen, I’ll buy you lunch (seriously). And with the “anything can happen” mentality of the truly stupid and hopelessly devoted, I give you the four Hoos in the trenches to watch in the upcoming months.Offensive returner: Eugene Monroe, OT.Monroe is the latest in a string of great linemen at the University. From Dombrowski to D’Brickashaw (find me two better names for linemen, I dare you), outstanding line play has marked Virginia football through the years. Coming out of high school in New Jersey, recruiting services were fairly unanimous in rating Big Gene as the nation’s Number One lineman; some said he was the No. 1 overall recruit. Though slow to adjust to the college game, Monroe has grown into the man-beast those recruiting services thought he would. Learning under D’Brickashaw and practicing against Chris Long has helped him mature into a true force on the field for the Orange and Blue.With at least three, and possibly four, new starters on the O-line, Monroe will need to be the Rock of Gibraltar at left tackle. This line is his to lead; doing so will free up Cedric Peerman and Mikell Simpson to run over, around and through opposing defenses.Defensive returner: Clint Sintim, OLB.Defense is inherently harder to learn at the major college level. Offensive newcomers have to adjust to stronger, faster players, but still get to initiate the action on the field. Defensive players have to adjust to the physical differences as well, but must also hone their instincts and reactions; the positioning errors they could overcome with athleticism in high school now mean points for the other team.This makes leadership and coaches-on-the-field all the more important with a young defense. Chris Long, Allen Billyk, Jermaine Dias and Nate Lyles all graduated. Jeffrey Fitzgerald, Chris Cook and Mike Brown are gone because of off-field problems. Thus it all returns to Sintim to bring the young’uns up to speed, and fast.He’ll have help from the other returners in the linebacking group. Jon Copper and Antonio Appleby have both proven their mettle over the last three years and will be called upon to hold down the fort in the heart of the Orange Crush defense. But Sintim is the heart and soul of this defense and the true playmaking threat at outside linebacker.Virginia’s 2008 season requires some tweaks to the old mantra “offense wins games, defense wins championships.” Our offense should keep us in games, but it’ll be up to the defense to win them.Offensive newcomer: B.J. Cabbell, OG.Cabbell certainly has the biggest shoes to fill of the young U.Va. linemen: those of first-round pick Branden Albert (who has been projected as the starting left tackle for the Chiefs, by the way). He certainly has the size to do it.Standing 6-foot-6 and already more than 300 pounds, the Nelson County High School product will be a central part of the Hoos’ offensive production. Whether it’s springing Peerman and Simpson or keeping blitzers out of Peter Lalich’s pocket, Cabbell and his O-line cohorts are the lynchpin to gridiron success. If he’s not up to the task, Billy Cuffee and Patrick Slebonick wait in the wings.Defensive newcomer: Sean Gottschalk, DE.The defensive line is the biggest area in which new players will need to step up — and step up in a hurry. A relatively experienced linebacking corps is the catalyst of this year’s defense, but the 3-4 scheme makes those linebackers vulnerable to offensive linemen getting to the second level and blowing up defensive schemes. Unless, of course, the D-line can wreak havoc.Last year, the front three did just that. Over. And over. And over again. Having one of the most physically freakish defenders in the country made that possible. Losing all three starters hurts all aspects of the defense, but Gottschalk is one part of the solution.No one is expecting him, or Alex Field on the other side, to be the next Chris Long, at least not right out of the gate. But making strides in that direction will be a crucial part of keeping U.Va.’s opponents out of the end zone.