South Carolina football recruiting: Tavyn Jackson breaks down Gamecocks recruitment

We chat with the Florida DB about his style of play, plans for a visit to Columbia, and a possible decision date.

When Tavyn Jackson released his top eight on Monday, South Carolina was on the list. With his mind switching to narrowing that down ahead of a summer decision date, the Tallahassee cornerback has had some good communication with the Gamecocks staff as he weighs his options.

“Coach Muschamp, Coach (Travaris) Robinson, and (OLB) Coach (Mike) Peterson have spoken to me. Their impression was that they are about business,” said Jackson.

With fifteen pass breakups as a junior to go with his 58 tackles, Jackson is a definite shutdown corner. He actually had some adjustments to make when he found himself as a starter as a sophomore a couple of years back. As time went on, he was tasked with guarding players like John Burt (a 12-game starter with Texas as a freshman in 2015) and Keith Gavin (a four-star receiver who signed with Florida State in February).

“[B]eing a shutdown corner…relies on your matchup that week (and) [b]eing able to control the receiver’s route without guessing on the route and being wrong,” Jackson said.

Jackson confirmed that he plans to enroll in January at the program of his choice by dual-enrolling at a community college, since he only has a few credits left to go before he can graduate. That will put him on pace to hit campus in time for camp next spring.

“Once the fall hits I won’t have anything to do but focus on football,” Jackson said. “I feel as if enrolling early would put me ahead at any program I decide.”

As for a visit to Columbia, that is in the works for Jackson. A decision on where he’ll be attending may come as early as next month.

“I guarantee I will be taking an official to South Carolina once given the opportunity,” said Jackson. “I actually will be committing come the end of June or early July.”

Written on May 25, 2016 at 6:53 pm


Preseason Top 25s all seem to love Michigan

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

The Wolverines are getting a lot of attention in early season polls.

As everyone under the sun begins to release their preseason top-25 lists, one thing is sure to have caught Ohio State fans’ eyes, and its not the Buckeyes’ ranking — Michigan is nearly a unanimous preseason top-15 team.

Preseason rankings, even by respected media members, are largely educated guesswork and largely meaningless. But even Vegas bettors are buying Michigan stock, as the Westgate Las Vegas Superbook gives the Wolverines the second-best odds at winning the playoff.

I was genuinely surprised by all of the love for the Wolverines. I know it’s “Year Two” for Harbaugh and Company, that they signed the number one overall recruit in Rashan Gary, and that they’re fresh off shellacking Florida 41-7 in their bowl game, but these prognostications seemed to ignore Ohio State and Michigan State’s recent dominance vis-a-vis the Wolverines. Not to mention their quarterback situation.

So I decided to take as objective a look as possible at the Wolverines for next season. First, today, I wanted to take a look at all of the various preseason projections to get a reference point.

First, Mark Schlabach put the Wolverines at fourth way back in January:

Michigan will bring back almost everybody on offense, although losing quarterback Jake Rudock and center Graham Glasgow is significant…Defensively, Michigan will have to replace its entire linebacker corps, but its defensive line figures to be one of the country’s best. New defensive coordinator Don Brown led one of the stingiest defenses in the FBS at Boston College this past season.

Schlabach questions whether Houston transfer John O’Korn can take over for the departed Jake Rudock, who was also a transfer. We’ll dig in to O’Korn and the quarterback battle more later on.

Next, Athlon is the first big season preview magazine to release their top-25, and they ranked Michigan fifth:

The Wolverines were one fumbled punt snap against Michigan State away from being in the College Football Playoff conversation last November. If Harbaugh can work his magic on another quarterback once again, this team has the goods to push Ohio State for the Big Ten East Division championship and a shot at this year’s CFP.

They note that Michigan has two All-Americans in the secondary in Jourdan Lewis and Jabrill Peppers, Rashan Gary on the defensive line, and also an experienced wide receiver corps.

Bruce Feldman and Stewart Mandel both think highly of the Wolverines, ranking them fifth in their respective top-25s. For Stew, it all comes down to:

In a word: Harbaugh. All these lofty prognostications (mine included) are largely because we’ve seen the guy do it before at Stanford and with the 49ers. It’s similar to when Nick Saban got to Alabama and Urban Meyer to Ohio State; you knew it wouldn’t take them long, and indeed, both took undefeated teams to their respective conference championship games in their second seasons. Something similar seems like a more-than-attainable feat this season for a veteran Michigan team that came within a botched punt snap against Michigan State from winning its first seven Big Ten games.

Bruce looks at Michigan’s schedule and likes what he sees, outside of late-season road games with Ohio State, Iowa, and Michigan State:

The non-conference schedule is much easier this year. No road trips and they face three teams that were a combined 7-31 last year.

So, based on this slew of top-25s, you get the picture of a team with a lot of solid experience in the secondary, in the receiving corps (including tight end Jake Butt), and on the defensive line. The schedule is extremely favorable until the end of the season. And then there’s Harbaugh leading the charge. Figure out a starting quarterback and this team looks golden, right?

Well, maybe.

In our next edition, we’ll dig in to the Wolverines’ schedule, and arguments for and against a top-5 Michigan based on accumulated recruiting talent, Harbaugh, and key position battles.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 1:06 pm


Florida-Tennessee tops ESPN’s list of high stakes games for 2016

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

The absurd hype over a nail potentially giving a hammer tetanus reaches a new high.

Florida’s trip to Tennessee for what should be one of September’s best college football games is going to be one of the most exciting games on the defending SEC East champions’ schedule. It’s probably up there with playing the LSU team that has been part of a see-sawing rivalry in recent years, going for a third straight win against Georgia, traveling to Arkansas in the November cold for a game that could decide teams that travel to Atlanta, or facing off against hated in-state rival Florida State and potentially attempting to become the first invading team to vanquish the Seminoles in Tallahassee since the Gators did so four years ago.

It’s not, I say with a great deal of comfort, currently the highest-stakes game of the college football regular season, nor will it be. ESPN’s Chris Low and Adam Rittenberg disagree with me, though!

1. Florida at Tennessee, Sept. 24

What’s at stake: All Jim McElwain did in his first season at Florida, despite some serious shortcomings on offense, was go out and win the SEC’s Eastern Division championship. And, yes, that means Florida beat Tennessee for the 11th straight time. The Vols last beat the Gators four head coaches ago in a rivalry that hasn’t been much of one for the past decade. Butch Jones has been steadily building back Tennessee’s program, and his roster certainly looks the part with returning playmakers and experience. But the reality is that Florida has found a way to win this game over the years, and Tennessee has found a way to lose it. If the Vols don’t change that trend this season in Knoxville, there will be massive avalanche on Rocky Top.

Ignoring the (sic) potential of that last sentence, the plainly wrong logic of Florida winning the SEC East meaning it beat Tennessee — which would’ve been easily explained with the fact that Florida has never lost to Tennessee and played in the SEC Championship Game in the same season, had someone done the minute of research necessary to publish that — and the convenient omission of the fact that Florida’s “serious shortcomings on offense” really weren’t there in September, when Will Grier had his finest hour against Tennessee: This is insane.

We’re talking about two teams that could vie for the SEC’s lesser division’s title, and what I assume — without checking, though I will check at some point! — is the longest winning streak by one team that has won a national championship in the last 20 years over another. And we’re also talking about two teams that have played one-point games in the last two years.

But we’re talking about two teams that will need a few breaks to work their way into the national title picture, given that neither one owns a win over Alabama — the team that gatekeeps both squads’ title hopes, more or less — since 2008. Those two one-point games were largely unwatchable (2014) and weird but not transcendent until the end (2015), not Hagler-Hearns-style classics. Neither coach is going to get fired for losing this game, with Jim McElwain set for 2017 come anything but tragedy or scandal and Butch Jones more likely to be subsumed by his own scandals or a snowball effect after a loss to Florida.

Low and Rittenberg weren’t working with the most coherent criteria for selecting their high-stakes contests:

Imagine the college football schedule is a roulette board and you have a large stack of casino chips. Now, pick the circles where you want to place the most chips.

Remember, you’re not selecting necessarily the biggest games or the fiercest rivalries or games guaranteed to shape the national title race. You’re picking the games certain to carry high stakes, no matter what happens between now and kickoff. You are doing this right now, months before preseason camp begins and depth charts are finalized. Most of these contests should fall early in the season, but some later games also fit into the high-stakes category.

So what goes into a high-stakes game? It could have playoff implications for both squads. It also could feature a lengthy streak in an annual series. It could include a coach on thin ice with his fan base, needing this particular win to reach higher ground. It could start or end a critical stretch for one or both teams. Bottom line: These are the games every fan base has circled right now.

I guess the conceit here, maladroitly explained with a roulette metaphor that makes no damn sense if you think about it for more than five seconds, is that they’re trying to bet on a single game being more compelling than the rest. Given that, the best and most compelling reason to put Florida-Tennessee at the top of the list according to the stated criteria is the Gators’ 11-year winning streak.

But the most interesting outgrowth of the streak, at least to my mind, isn’t its existence unto itself, but Florida players — most notably Jalen Tabor — making it a shield to take up and a cause to defend. And I don’t care about that! I think all of that jawing is a distraction even when it’s clever, and I haven’t thought anything about the back-and-forth between Florida and Tennessee — from coaches, players, and fans — has been genuinely funny since Will Muschamp’s “It’s great to see all these people out here getting disappointed — I love it!” And that hardly ever gets explained as a response to the audible and embittered “FUCK YOU, FLORIDA!” chants at Neyland Stadium that afternoon, which Jones explained away as attributible to an “appetite for winning” and “passion.”

Making the case that no fan base needs its team to take a win over another team as badly as Tennessee’s fan base needs one from its Vols over the Gators is so easy, because it’s probably true. (I don’t even know what other matchup I would pick.) Yet that’s not part of the stated criteria Low and Rittenberg use, and it’s not explained in their capsule on the game.

It’s almost like ESPN’s producing content based on hoping certain fan bases will take an interest in it, and retconning its reasoning for talking about those teams based on that. Almost. Maybe.

Florida-Tennessee is hotly anticipated. It will probably be a good game, and an important one. It probably won’t  be the “highest-stakes” game this fall.

We’re talking about it, though, because someone published an ordinal list.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 1:01 pm


Committany Nation (5.25.16): Penn State Building Momentum with Lamont Wade and Matt Dotson

Matt Dotson and James Franklin

The Nittany Lions seem like they’re finally starting to build up some positive momentum on the recruiting trail with a few prospects.

Evidence Njoku names a top-10

One of Penn State’s primary wide receiver targets recently named his top-10, which included Penn State. The three-star from New Jersey last visited Happy Valley in mid-April. Penn State’s primary competition for Njoku seems to be the Miami Hurricanes, which is the team his older brother currently plays for. His primary recruiter is wide receivers coach, Josh Gattis.

Sean Clifford rising?

With the final regional camp for The Opening quickly approaching, it’s likely that the major recruiting services will be giving their ratings and rankings a face lift in the near future. One player who could be in line for a nice bump up the ladder could be Penn State commit, quarterback Sean Clifford.

Clifford has been on a roll lately. After receiving an invitation to participate in the Elite 11 at The Opening in Oregon this summer, he now has picked up an invitation to the Rivals 5 Star Challenge.

Clifford is looking more and more like he’s going to be a leader off the field, thanks to his already tireless efforts to recruit other players to join the 2017 class, and he’s showing that he can have that same type of impact on the field, as well. Congratulations, Sean!

Speaking of Clifford as a recruiter…

One of the main recruits that Sean Clifford has been going after to join Penn State’s class is tight end Matt Dotson. The four-star Archbishop Moeller (Cincinnati, Oh.) star just finished a weekend visit to Penn State that looked like it went very well.

And it sounds like it went very, very well.

With the loss of Brent Wilkerson, the roster is definitely lacking in tight end depth, to a degree. Dotson would be a huge pickup, as would potential 5-star 2018 TE Zack Kuntz.

Swift ready to name a top-5

One of 2017’s most-sought after prospects in the country is ready to name his top-5 schools. D’Andre Swift has been a Penn State target for quite some time, and the five-star running back still has high interest in the Nittany Lions.

Along with Penn State, others expected to make the cut are Georgia, Florida State, Alabama and Clemson.

Lamont Wade: Future Nittany Lion?

Things have been going very well for Penn State as far as Lamont Wade is concerned lately. It has seemed like Wade has been in Happy Valley every other weekend over the past two months, and the Penn State coaches have to feel good about their chances of landing the stud, four-star cornerback.

Wade also dropped a top-10 recently, and while it can be implied that the list is in no particular order, Penn State has to feel good about being the first name mentioned.

The coaching staff has been working extremely hard to get Wade to Penn State, and they are starting to see the fruits of their labor pay off. A commitment any time in the near future would be a big boost to the staff’s recruiting, which has been a bit quieter than fans have gotten used to over the last two years.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 11:43 am


Pac-12 Moves to Reduce Number of Saturday Night Football Games

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The Pac-12 announced that it is taking action to reduce the number of Saturday night football games. The conference will also impose fines for court and field storming and introduce eSports competitions.

While Bruin fans were following along with all the news about UCLA’s new apparel contract yesterday, the Pac-12 Conference made a few announcements of its own.

The Pac-12 announced that it is taking action to reduce the number of Saturday night football games. Specifically, a Pac-12 Network game can now start at either 2:30 or 6 pm locally and overlap with an ESPN or FOX exclusive TV window. The change is expected to reduce the number of Pac-12 Networks night games by as many as four games.

Four games doesn’t seem like much when you consider that there are 13 weeks to the college football season.

But, anything the conference can do to reduce the number of night football games is certainly welcome from a fan perspective. This is especially true for Bruin fans because the Rose Bowl is so far away from campus.

The conference also announced that it will impose institutional fines for court and field storming. Beginning in the Fall, the conference will fine schools $25,000 for the first offense, $50,000 for the second offense and $100,000 for the third offense.

Finally, the conference announced that the Pac-12 Networks will commence eSports competitions this coming year. Under this proposal, teams from campuses will participate based on a specific video game. The competitions will include head-to-head matchups in studios as well as a tournament in conjunction with a Pac-12 championship event. The game titles and event formats are still to be determined.

“eSports is a natural fit for many of our universities located in the technology and media hubs of the country,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott. “Pac-12 Networks’ commitment to innovation as well as its natural tie to our universities and established media platform make it the perfect organization to develop the framework for eSports intercollegiate competition.”

Written on May 25, 2016 at 11:20 am


USC Trojans Football 2016: Preseason Player Spotlight, Steven Mitchell Jr.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

A rising freshman in 2015 Mitchell Jr. looks to take the next step this upcoming season.

With talent rampant at the wide receiver position in 2015, sophomore wideout Steven Mitchell Jr. was a player who flew under the radar. Even still, he put up productive numbers and remained a reliable source of production. Catching 37 passes for 335 yards and four touchdowns, Mitchell Jr. proved to be a steady target for a torrid Trojan passing attack.

Mitchell Jr. started off the season strong, catching four passes for 32 yards and a touchdown in the season-opener against Arkansas State as the Trojans asserted their dominance by a 55-7 margin. The following week against an overmatched Idaho team, he caught two passes for 16 yards, one of the many players to make a contribution in the contest as USC rolled again by a 59-9 edge.

Mitchell Jr. did his part against Stanford in the third game of the season, catching three passes for 12 yards and two touchdowns in a losing effort, as the Trojans fell by a 41-31 score. Looking to keep the good momentum going, he snared four passes for 66 yards and a touchdown as the Trojans high-powered offense proved too much for the Sun Devils, winning 42-14

Unfortunately for Mitchell, he would not see game action against Notre Dame and Utah as the second half of the season did not prove to be as fruitful for him. He still was a contributor to the offense, and followed up his two absences with a two-catch 11-yard performance against California, a contest USC won by a 27-21 score. Catching four passes for 22 yards against Arizona the week after, it was clear that Mitchell was making the most of his opportunities and producing when called upon.

During the final weeks of the season in particular, he showed that he could stretch the field, contributing three catches for 59 yards as the Trojans squeaked by Colorado, 27-24. Seven catches for 31 yards was his output the following week against Oregon as he proved a reliable constant in a 48-28 loss to their Pac-12 foes.

Contributing one catch for 17 yards against rival UCLA, the Trojans won by a 40-21 margin. Stanford managed to shut down Mitchell and the Trojans as he caught three passes for 39 yards as the program limped to the finish line of the regular season with a 41-22 loss.

Performing strong in the regular season earned USC a spot in the National Funding Holiday Bowl against Wisconsin and the two programs battled toe-to-toe with the Badgers coming out on the winning side of things, 23-21. Mitchell caught two passes for 21 yards, ending his season rather quietly.

What can he bring to the Trojans in 2016? He can provide depth to a deep receiving core, something that cannot be understated. During the grind of a football season, injuries happen, and if you have someone who can come off the bench and step in and make an impact right away, that is enormous. Particularly with all the experience he gained his freshman year, he should be able to make a bigger impression this season.

50 receptions, 500 yards, and six touchdowns is what I think he will end up contributing to the team this year. He has shown the ability to be a productive receiver and I think he will take the next step to becoming an elite one in 2016.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 10:51 am


5-Star Michigan QB Commit Dylan McCaffrey Opens Up on Recruiting for Wolverines

5-Star Michigan QB Commit Dylan McCaffrey Opens Up on Recruiting for Wolverines

Credit: Student Sports
2017 5-Star QB and current Michigan commit Dylan McCaffrey was one of four passers from last weekend’s Oakland Elite 11 regional to earn an invite to the Elite 11 Finals next month.

EL SOBRANTE, California — One of the main attractions at the Oakland Nike Elite 11 Regional camp over the weekend was 5-star quarterback and current Michigan pledge Dylan McCaffrey.

He certainly didn’t disappoint in delivering a strong performance that resulted in earning an invitation to the Elite 11 Finals in Los Angeles next month.

“I feel like I did pretty well. Of course, I think there are a lot of areas for improvement. One of the things I did pretty well was just taking the coaching I was getting,” McCaffrey told Bleacher Report. “When they told me something to work on, I did my best to change it and I think that helped me. I just want to improve every day from now and go out there and do my best against these other top guys.”

Of course, most fans will recognize the name given that the 6’5”, 200-pounder out of Valor Christian High School in Littleton, Colorado is the son of former NFL receiver Ed McCaffrey and the younger brother of Stanford All-American running back Christian McCaffrey.

Despite the connections to the Stanford program, Dylan opted to commit to Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and his staff back in March.

According to McCaffrey, the combination of education plus his comfort level with Harbaugh and quarterbacks coach Jedd Fisch played a huge role in helping him select the Wolverines.

“The biggest factor was that Michigan is a great academic institution. It’s one of the top five public schools out there,” McCaffrey said. “Another big factor was Coach Harbaugh, Coach Fisch and that entire coaching staff. They are all going to put me in the best position to succeed.”

McCaffrey admits that Harbaugh’s history with developing quarterbacks and the job he did with the Wolverines last year going 10-3 caught his attention.

“It was impressive what he did this past year. He didn’t have his own recruiting class and he pushed Michigan up to Top 20 in the country,” McCaffrey said. “That’s pretty incredible. He just used the talent he had and made them a lot better team in one year.”

McCaffrey, who rates as the nation’s top pro-style passer and the No. 19 player overall in the 2017 class, said he never felt pressured to follow in their footsteps in attending Stanford or Duke—where his oldest brother Max just finished a four-year career playing receiver for the Blue Devils.

Instead, he leaned on them to help him navigate the process and help him find the best fit of the eight schools who had offered and were pursuing him.

“Their advice was mainly to just look at the school and mainly focus on the guys you are going to go to school with. Those are the guys you will be hanging out with,” McCaffrey explained. “Coaches are great to you during recruiting, but once you get there, it’s all business and they are your bosses. You really have to go somewhere where you will enjoy hanging out with your teammates.”

He may be joining his father and elder siblings in giving out similar advice to his youngest brother, Luke, who will enter his sophomore season at Valor Christian this fall as the team’s backup quarterback and as a starter at corner.

“[Luke is] going to go wherever fits him best. My brothers did that with me. They wanted me to go wherever was best for me, even if it wasn’t Duke or Stanford if that wasn’t the right fit,” Dylan said. “I think it will be the same thing with Luke. We will support him wherever he decides to go.”

For now, Dylan is turning his focus toward his future and helping recruit top talent to Ann Arbor.

“There are a bunch of guys [I want to talk to]. I just want to put Michigan out there and spark everybody’s interest in Michigan,” McCaffrey said. “I want to let the top guys know we are going to be doing something special up there in the next couple of years.”

McCaffrey, who reports a 3.97 GPA, is also working on picking out his major in college.

While that is still to be determined, he does have one career in mind that he could see himself pursuing whenever his playing days conclude.

“Oh gosh, my dream career would be to become an architect. I like geometry and kind of the art side of things and I would like to get into being able to design some things myself,” McCaffrey said. “I would love to design and build houses. That’s a great part in everyone’s life that not a lot of people get to take time and appreciate. That’s a big part of everyone’s life.”

Sanjay Kirpalani is a National Recruiting Analyst for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand and all recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 10:15 am


Mark Richt to donate $1M of his money to help get Indoor Practice Facility built

CMR has said getting an IPF is priority #1 for him. And, according to reports, he’s going to put his money where his mouth is on that point.

According to reports by CaneSport.com and Matt Porter of the Palm Beach Post, Miami Hurricanes Head Coach Mark Richt will be donating $1 Million of his own money to help with the construction of an Indoor Practice Facility for the Canes Football team.

Richt has repeatedly said that getting an IPF for Miami is priority number one, and this report would only go to support that point.

According to several reports on the topic over the last month, the design for the IPF is on paper and has been shown to prospective donors as well as football recruits. Those plans are not ready for public consumption yet, but hopefully, if a lead gift is gen, they will be soon.

CaneSport.com and others have reported that the cost of the desired IPF could be in the range of $27 Million. It would cover one of the existing football practice fields, and also house a weight room and football offices for the Hurricanes’ program. The construction timeline for the IPF has been estimated to take 2 years, per reports.

With his reported donation, Mark Richt is proving that this is a major need for the program. Hopefully, Miami will find the lead gift donor soon to help get the Indoor Practice Facility Project off the ground.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 9:56 am


College football recruits don’t care about your alma-mater’s classic uniform ideal

I think everybody’s understood this for a while, even if they don’t like it: recruits don’t care about tradition when it comes to the uniforms they wear in college. Nor should they, because schools and alumni cling to some really unattractive crap for a long time, often for no good reason beyond some limp defense like “well they’ve worn it since the ’50s!”

Nebraska’s helmets are dull, but they’ve been doing that dull thing for decades, even after abandoning that dull offense they did for decades. Michigan’s helmets and uniforms are undeniably iconic, and also represent your grandpa telling a long-winded story with no point. Penn State’s blank-paper look basically forces 85 kids to wear a nap. Alabama only puts numbers on the lids, which actually works well as a metaphor for the player as nameless and dispensable football cog. Dammit, I just made Alabama’s uniforms interesting for the first time. I may never get beyond this setback.

Anyhow, we finally have quantitative evidence of these obvious uniform-related assessments. Pick Six Previews polled a bunch of high school recruits about their opinions on uniforms. These are the results:

I have a few bones to pick here–if you think Texas or USC have bad uniforms, then you’re just blind, okay, kids. And Florida State’s uniforms have been and will always be awful. Dang Millennials. Florida State’s helmet is a re-enactment of an arrow that annually tries to escape that color scheme.

I digress. Point is, high school players much prefer the more modern Oregon-type approach to uniforms than the more traditional approach by most major college football brand names. Both Alabama and Penn State rate high on the bad-uniform side, and there are multiple votes for Michigan, USC, and Texas, as well.

The indifference toward Alabama’s or Penn State’s or Michigan’s uniforms will always be immaterial in recruiting, because it’s Alabama and Penn State and Michigan. Aesthetics may be a genuine factor for a few kids but it’ll go about two dozen spots down the list of priorities with name-brand schools.

I think Pick Six Preview’s Mike Nowoswiat cuts to an important bottom line: there is little-to-no marginal value in rebooting your look if you’re Alabama or Michigan. There is some value in that if you’re an upstart, like Oregon was, like TCU was, like Baylor was. Maryland’s uniforms are polarizing even among recruits, but you know, at least they’ve noticed that Maryland exists. That’s a good chunk of the battle right there. Just make noise. Noise helps; doesn’t matter at first if the racket is in any way coherent.

You don’t do yourself many favors by sticking to what you’ve done in the past, unless you’re one of those blueblood schools. I like NC State’s block-S helmets. But let’s be honest: Stanford is Block S University at this point. Sure, NC State’s got itself a different twist on the block-S, and that logo is almost a century old and that’s cool. Probably nobody’s noticed.

State’s been really late to the uniform game, and that’s been a detriment, superficial though it may feel to me or you. There have been mild improvements here and there, and recently the football program has embraced more alternate looks. The font on the uniforms still looks like it was imagined in crayon by a blind graphic artist, but I have faith that in another couple decades we’ll have caught up to 2005.

Basically, it really helps in recruiting if you have a good football team and have had a good football team for a long time, but short of that, it helps to have a team that looks all fancy-shiny-different, which can eventually help along the way to the good football.

Written on May 25, 2016 at 8:00 am


REPORT: S Tim Irvin interested in Miami after announcing transfer from Auburn

Could former Miami Westminster Christian DB Tim Irvin be headed home to South Florida? – 247Sports

A South Florida native and former U.S. Army All-American, S Tim Irvin is on the move from Auburn. Could he come home to Miami?

In the class of 2015, Westminster Christian DB Tim Irvin decided to follow one of his favorite coaches, DB coach Travaris Robinson, to Auburn. After one season which saw Irvin play in 10 games and record 18 tackles, Robinson decided to leave Auburn to join Will Muschamp‘s staff at South Carolina. Following Robinson’s departure, Irvin announced his intention to transfer from the Tigers on Tuesday.

A U.S. Army All-American in 2015, Irvin is a highly skilled Safety that many teams would love to add to their rosters. According to a report by 247Sports, Irvin is looking at 3 schools for his transfer destination: Miami, Texas, and East Carolina.

The connection to Texas is clear: Irvin was once committed there before flipping to Auburn. Wescott Eberts from Burnt Orange Nation covered the Longhorns’ angle of this pretty expertly, and you should read that for more context.

The connection to East Carolina is also clear: Irvin’s uncle Sedrick, a former Michigan State standout running back, works for the Pirates in a non-coaching role. In any event, it’s family, connected with football, and an ASSURED starting spot in 2 years.

For Miami, it’s home for Irvin. He grew up in Dade County, and starred at Westminster Christian. Another one of Irvin’s uncles is none other than Miami Hurricanes legend and NFL Hall of Fame WR Michael Irvin, who needs no introduction.

The big news, according to the aformentioned 247Sports report, is that Irvin will be on campus in Coral Gables on Wednesday. That visit should go a long way to determining Miami’s chances to bring in this talented player.

Yes, Irvin would have to sit out the 2016 season due to NCAA transfer rules, so he wouldn’t be an immediate help to the DB corps. But, adding a player of his ability to the position of greatest need would be a big get for Miami. And, this is something that the Canes have done in previous years. Miami brought in DT Gerald Willis III last season under similar, but not identical, circumstances.

Mark Richt has been very open about the need to add talented players to the roster. Whether or not Irvin and this transfer situation fit what Miami is looking for remains to be seen.

Update: Peter Ariz from CanesInSight.com reports Miami will not engage with Irvin regarding a potential transfer

Go Canes

Written on May 25, 2016 at 7:58 am


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