Podcast: My discussion tonight with Lachlan McLean on SportsTalk 84, WHAS radio in Louisville. Click the small arrow above at the right to play.
(Source: whas.com)
I think Bob Valvano and I may have solved all the problems of sport in this nearly 30-minute conversation today on ESPN 680 in Louisville. We talked about new U of L recruit Mangok Mathiang, rules for UK and U of L athletes on social media, risk-reward and the drug culture in baseball, the situation at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center, women being admitted to Augusta and Joe Posnanski’s new Paterno biography. Give it a listen if you get the chance.
Last season, when quarterback Will Stein was injured in the second quarter of the University of Louisville’s game at Kentucky, Cardinals coaches turned to freshman Teddy Bridgewater. As with any first-year player, the offensive staff had to keep things simple.
They built on Bridgewater’s foundation from week to week, but it wasn’t until this past winter that they were able to sit down with Bridgewater and go deeper into his performance last season, and into what they want to do going forward.
This summer, Bridgewater and Stein have been immersed in a master’s level course in football film study, with offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Shawn Watson acting as absentee professor. He can’t sit down with the players and conduct meetings, but his presence is palpable in the film room through the written word.
In an interview last week with WDRB.com, Watson shared a little bit about what that study experience is like for his quarterbacks.
This week’s roundup of college football notes from around the region and nation, led by University of Louisville offensive coordinator Shawn Watson, who says he wants U of L’s offense to be “more multiple” this season, and tells why:
“Last year we were real static for two reasons,” he said. “One we inherited it, and second we were young. Multiplicity comes in first personnel sets or groups, and secondly formation structures and ways to get into those structures. I don’t like to be a static offense. That is, you come out of the huddle and you’re in this. I inherited this and we wanted something different. They look and think you’re two-back personnel, but then you go empty set. You want to make the defensive coordinator and opposing staff work.”
Two of the most interesting interviews I did all of last year were on a subject that might make your eyes glaze over — athletic department finances at the University of Kentucky.
Most of those discussions never saw the light of newsprint. It happens. Editors decide to go another direction. Perhaps I put them to sleep.
I was reminded of them today, though, when UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart announced that UK would increase basketball ticket prices to pay for a bump in budget, up to a school-record $91.9 million.
I had several conversations with Barnhart over the financial picture at UK last year, including one wide-ranging, extensive interview. I also had an interesting discussion with Joe Peek, then a UK economics professor, but now a senior economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
After a good deal of analysis, this was my conclusion on UK: It is a model athletic program in terms of its financial structure and practice. It does not take a dime of university money. Its student fee is modest and hasn’t increased in a decade. It gives money back to university efforts — including money that is not on the books (it splits merchandise revenue 50-50 with the school, even though estimates are that 90 percent of that revenue is athletics-generated, and uses $500,000 of its athletics media commercial time to promote university, rather than athletic, initiatives). The UK athletic department is not carrying a high debt load. It is truly self-supporting, and has become so without becoming overly commercialized or corporate in nature. It funds a broad-based athletic program that sponsors the most sports of any school in the Southeastern Conference.
There might be another ban in the works for the University of Louisville football program.
You get the feeling listening to Cardinals’ coach Charlie Strong that if he could ban some of the preseason hype coming his team’s way, he’d lock it out faster than you can say “no comment.”
When WDRB sports director Tom Lane caught up with Strong at a charity golf event on Monday and asked about fan expectations, Strong did everything but take a 3-wood to the question.
“Well you know one thing we need to do, let’s tone it down with the fans, No. 1, because expectations are out there,” Strong said. “You look at the first two years, we were picked last and this year for some reason people think we’re going to have this outstanding football team. It’s all about work, it’s all about our players understanding that you still have to go play the game.”
VIDEO: Talking Dale Earnhardt Jr. with WDRB’s Pat Doney.
A little more than a year ago today I was standing outside Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s hauler at Michigan International Speedway, listening to him patiently field what had to seem like his millionth question about his winless streak.
Beyond the streak, I was struck by how Earnhardt didn’t flinch at the question, knew it was coming, didn’t try to be flip about it or act irritated by it, but to answer it honestly, with an upbeat outlook. He said he felt like he’d been driving better than he had in years, and his team was performing well. He said he felt like it was just a matter of time.
Turns out, his time was a year away. But it came Sunday, at that same Michigan International Speedway, with a victory that ended his winless streak at 143 races, and the response has been overwhelming.
Seldom will you see so many competitors so quick with congratulations. (I was struck, in fact, a year ago by how many said an Earnhardt win would be great for the sport).
Jimmie Johnson, a Hendrick Motorsports teammate, jumped onto Twitter to tap out, “I’m so happy for Jr.” Danica Patrick, who drives for Earnhardt’s team in the Nationwide Series, Tweeted, “Way to go boss!”
Country star Brad Paisley and Indy Car legend Mario Andretti were among the celebrants.
Everyone in NASCAR knows the score. No amount of marketing mojo the considerable talents at NASCAR could devise would generate as much interest as Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Victory Lane. The 37-year-old has been voted NASCAR’s most popular driver nine straight years. He leads the circuit in merchandise sales every year.
Forget Tiger winning a major. Earnhardt winning a Sprint Cup Race is every bit as big a needle-mover for a sport looking for a spark, and everyone knows it.
The WDRB College Basketball Notebook is off and running, and while the NBA Finals are center stage in the hoops world, they do show that Final Four experience can be valuable even at the highest professional level.
Think about the Final Four alumni playing in the NBA Finals for either the Miami Heat or Oklahoma City Thunder — Shane Battier (Duke), Mario Chalmers (Kansas), Udonis Haslem (Duke), Juwon Howard (Michigan), Mike Miller (Florida), Dwyane Wade (Marquette), Russell Westbrook (UCLA), Nick Collison (Kansas), Nazr Mohammed (Kentucky), Daequan Cook (Ohio State) and Cole Aldrich (Kansas).
Final Four experience, of course, is no requirement. But it doesn’t hurt.
Now on to the notes …
LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) — Churchill Downs today released plans for a dramatically different qualifying process for the Kentucky Derby, taking a page from NASCAR and the PGA to create a points system for reaching the Run for the Roses.
Calling it the “Road to the Kentucky Derby,” race officials say they’re hoping it will be more understandable for fans accustomed to following leagues and standings.
The new system should shake up what had become set strategies for reaching the race, and does streamline the route to the Derby by limiting the number of “points” races to 36. Previously, earnings from 185 graded-stakes determined the field.
The new points system is a historic departure from the way fields have been determined. But it’s not necessarily easier to understand. In fact, on its face, it may be more difficult for the casual fan to understand than the system already in place.
There was a time, back when a live broadcast usually meant radio and newspapers were the dominant sports medium, when horse racing and boxing occupied the front row of American sports.
A day with a prizefight and the Belmont Stakes would’ve left the Red Smiths of the sportswriting profession on literary overload and the fans and front pages screaming.
Yesterday was that kind of day. But in 2012, with horse racing listing and boxing losing its punch, the results only served as a reminder of the struggles besetting these sports, and why they are often as likely to leave the mass of fans frustrated as fulfilled.
This is not a typical sports video. But it’s important, I think, to watch. Some will be uncomfortable with its overt spiritual message, others will be inspired by it. But if nothing else, here’s what at the very least I’d like you to take from this. College athletes are people with real lives, and sometimes real problems. Often they face real challenges. They are not, by and large, solely about the things we often reduce them to on sports radio or, quite often, write about in the newspaper.
During the course of this video, and it’s 16 minutes long, so be patient while it loads, you will see players you are very familiar with, and see things about their lives that you did not know. It takes courage to get in front of a camera and talk about some of the things these athletes talk about, particularly a guy like Victor Anderson, who discusses homelessness and growing up in a culture of drugs. But I hope you’ll take the time to watch it, as a reminder that these players, all players, are more than a skill set or a stat line.
This Forbes bracket projects the tournament based on operating expenses. I’ll post one a little later that projects it based on total expenses (because operating expenses don’t always show the vast gap between programs). Still, this is always good to see.
As Forbes’ sports business writer Chris Smith points out:
Including the play-in round, the team with the higher operating expenses won in 70% of the games in last year’s tournament. If you used our system to fill out your bracket, you would have correctly picked 68.3% of the games from the round of 64 up to the Final Four. For comparison’s sake, taking the favored teams in those games would have yielded a 65% rate of correct picks. That’s not a large difference in total correct picks, but operating expenses offer a significant advantage if you want to capture those late-round points: team spending correctly predicted half of the Elite Eight and Final Four, whereas picking by the favorites predicted just three of the final eight teams and none in the Final Four.
One of the world’s most dramatic and unpredictable sports playoffs is crafted in a hotel meeting room. The television spectacle of March Madness, for which networks pay the NCAA nearly $800 million per year, is scripted in a room that not only doesn’t include a TV executive, but a TV.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection committee is a coveted seat in college sports. Each year, 10 people spend the entire basketball season, plus most of the week leading up to Selection Sunday, considering the teams that will make up the field.
Last week I spent two days in Indianapolis with other media representatives invited to an abbreviated version of the selection week process. Teams were debated. Seedings were voted upon. A mock bracket was created. The following is a combination of what I learned and what I believe based, at least in part, on what I experienced.
(Source: courier-journal.com)
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