Dave in Green

Let's see now, Matt Hasselbeck is the lowest rated quarterback in the league and Seneca Wallace's halftime statistics tonight are 4 of 10 for 26 yards, 1 interception and 0 touchdowns.And exactly why would anyone think CF would do any better with this year's Seahawks than he did with the Browns?CF just has to hope that he hits the right team at the right time before his NFL career ends.

My impression is that Bardo and Swiech are two very different bigs who should not be lumped together. The single most impressive thing to me from watching Bardo last season is that he runs the court a lot faster than I expected. If Bardo's in even better shape this year and leading the way in many of the wind sprints, he should have no problem with an up-tempo game. I'd be more concerned about Bardo's shooting touch than his ability to run.My impression of Swiech is just the opposite. Just from watching him in last year's warmups, he seemed to have a nice shooting touch, even if it is a bit awkward looking. But Swiech did not appear as if he could run the court nearly as well as Bardo. If Swiech's somewhat stiff movement on the court was due to recovering from an ankle injury, he may have a little more to show this year. But I doubt he'll ever move as fast as Bardo.Obviously, you'd like to have bigs who can do it all. But there aren't very many of them, and they typically end up playing for the best of the big schools. The fact that Bardo and Swiech appear to have different strengths and weaknesses can be an advantage if their playing time is appropriately adjusted to individual game conditions.

I followed the game on the internet, and it was pretty ugly. Don't know how much of the problem was due to Charlie and how much was due to the generally poor performance of this season's Seahawks. They sure managed to get a lot of penalties at bad times on both offense and defense.All I ever hoped for was that Charlie would get a fair chance to develop and demonstrate his full abilities in the NFL. It's a tough league in which only a few quarterbacks become consistent winners. Even the best could not succeed without a strong supporting cast.

10/04/2008 Jeremiah Wood with great season opener The Finnish league started it's regular season this weekend, seeing 6 Court Side players in action. The most impressive Court Side-performance came from "rookie" Jeremiah Wood, who is in his first season overseas after graduating from Akron earlier this year. Wood signed a contract for Joensunn Kataja in Finland and showed what he can do in the Finnish league in the season-opener when he lead Kataja to a 86-80 win over Court Side player Alain Laroche's Korihait.Wood lead Kataja in scoring (23), rebounds (15), blocks (2) and assists (3) - he also added 3 steals to his performance while playing all 40 minutes of the game. Laroche added 16 points and 6 rebounds for Korihait. Other Court Side performances the Finnish first league round: Kurtis Rice had 20 points and 5 rebounds in Pyrintös lost to LrNMKY, Latece Williams 10 points and 2 rebounds in 17 minutes in FoKoPos win over ToPo, Calvin Walls added 17 points and 4 rebounds in 25 minutes when his Kouvot lost to last years champions Honka and Durell Vinson added 7 points and 7 rebounds in KTP's win over Team Componenta. http://www.court-side.com/news/news2/24EE3...D800518823?Open

I was pretty outraged at the intentional grounding call until I read the following from a supplement to the NCAA Football Rules prepared by the editors of Referee magazine:When to call intentional grounding by a quarterback, and who should call it, can be tricky. An official has to determine motive and read the situation in order to rule correctly. There must also be good communication on the part of the crew. The rules state that, to avoid a loss of yardage or to conserve time, a passer cannot throw a pass into an area in which no eligible receiver has a reasonable opportunity to catch it. ..... A passer must be under duress to commit grounding in the yardage-loss situation. If he throws a pass where no eligible receiver could have caught it, but was not threatened by defensive players bearing down on him when he did so, there is no grounding foul. As for the “reasonable opportunity to catch” part of the rule, the question is not whether an eligible receiver was in the vicinity of where the passer threw the pass, but instead is whether he was in the vicinity and could reasonably have caught the ball. For instance, imagine a passer under duress retreating about 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage and, in desperation, throwing the ball at the feet of a receiver running downfield. Although the pass lands within two or three feet of the receiver, the fact that he was looking downfield and did not even know where the ball was meant he had no reasonable opportunity to make a catch. Therefore, grounding should be called.I had always thought that if a pass landed within a few feet of a potential receiver that intentional grounding could not be called. But it appears as if the NCAA gives refs the opportunity to make a judgment call.

Go UMass! Win the NIT and show how good the Zips were to come so close to beating them on their home court.

The CBI was not created exclusively for Akron's benefit. But all of the stories about the NIT's snub of Akron certainly helped inspire the creation of the CBI, as evidenced by the CBI organizers prominently mentioning what happened to Akron in their initial press releases as proof of the need for a third post-season men's basketball tournament. So anyone who had anything at all to do with helping get last year's NIT snub publicized should take satisfaction in seeing what has come to pass.The Zips are really in a unique position right now. Some of the news outlets that played them up so prominently last year might follow up with coverage of what they do this year with their opportunity in the NIT. So let's just hope they play up to their full potential, in which case they could do very well, indeed.

Everyone please remember to give special thanks in your prayers tonight to the CBI. By making Akron the poster child of its new tournament based on the embarassing snub of the Zips last year by the NIT, the CBI shamed the NIT into including the Zips this year when the team's case was not as strong as it was last year.Please don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't believe the Zips deserve to be in the NIT this year. It's just that the NIT could have as easily repeated last year's snub if the CBI had not magnified the NIT's shame by building a new tournament on the NIT's ineptitude in not selecting the Zips.Whatever may happen to the CBI, they have definitely done a great service to the University of Akron, its men's basketball team and all of its fans.I just hope the team dedicates its performance this year to last year's graduating seniors who did not get the chance to show what they could do in the NIT.

A coaching staff and players with good character and integrity winning games the right way is the dream of every school.Who could possibly consider not fully supporting someone who made promises and set goals like those and then delivered on them?

If you're really trying to get the best 64 teams in the country together at the end of the regular season, then it makes no sense to automatically invite tournament winners from small conferences with no team near the top 64 in any of the ratings systems.The MAC would do better under a really fair and realistic system of selecting the top 64 teams in the country through a combination of human and computer polls than some of the lesser conferences.In any case, the NCAA championship tournament should not be about giving every conference a fair chance, but about giving every team a fair chance. If a conference winner is rated 100 in all the polls, it doesn't belong in a tournament for the top 64 teams.No system is perfect, and there would be plenty of complaining about the interpretation of the polls that produced the 64-team field. So you'd just replace the weak conference tournament champion complaints with poll complaints.One way to overcome that is for the NCAA to simply add one more game to their championship tournament and double the field to 128 teams. This would certainly allow more than one MAC team plus at least one team from almost every mid-major conference to make it into the big dance.Any conference that didn't have one of the top 128 teams in the rankings certainly would not deserve to place a team in the NCAAs based on winning a conference championship.With a quality coach like Keith Dambrot and the program he's building at Akron, the Zips would no doubt be in the NCAA championship tournament almost every year under a system that selected the top 128 teams in the country regardless of conference affiliation or conference tournament results.Of course, the big, powerful universities wouldn't like this, as it would only give them one more game where they might be upset. So the big schools would lobby the NCAA against it.It's up to the NCAA to be smart enough to realize that having students, alumni and fans of 128 schools rather than 64 focused on the national championship tournament makes twice as much sense for college basketball.

In the case of the NIT, the bad break was that the Zips were the unlucky ones with the unfortunate timing to be in just the right place with just the right record to publicly expose the senility of the NIT selection committee. Chances are that the Zips' bad break will result in some kind of correction by the NIT/NCAA to avoid future public humiliation. Point is, just a little more consistent excellence for the Zips would have transferred that bad break to some other unfortunate mid-major.

I've been a basketball fan for more years than most of you. I've followed a lot of teams over the years. I like the Akron Zips and Coach Dambrot a lot, and follow all the games pretty closely from up here in the frozen north.I think that Coach Dambrot has the Zips just on the edge of attaining consistent excellence. But the mark of true excellence is that it does not depend on getting good breaks. Excellence creates enough of a margin that it doesn't have to depend on the vagaries of getting the breaks to fall your way.The Zips showed glimpses of excellence this season. But not consistently enough to escape the clutches of the bad breaks that can ultimately spoil an otherwise outstanding season. Think in terms of a missed free throw, a careless turnover, a silly foul. A handful of those kinds of mistakes are all that stood between the Zips and an NCAA or, at worst, an NIT bid.You can't really fault being close to excellence, because so many coaches and teams are so far away from consistent excellence. You can't really fault those who aren't willing to give the Zips a break, either, because there are so many in search of a break and so few breaks to be given.Only a few teams consistently control their own destinies. That's the final step that Coach Dambrot and the Zips have to make -- controlling their own destiny and not leaving it in the hands of others.Toledo's blowout by FSU will not help the argument that the MAC deserves more respect. You could argue that the Zips would have done better than Toledo, and you'd probably be right. But that's not going to improve the Zips chances of catching a break.They're just going to have to try a little harder just like all of the other teams that have had to claw their way from the bottom of the heap to respectability. And, by the way, they have the potential within themselves to make that happen.

This from John Clayton of espn.com on winners and losers in the NFL draft: • Cleveland Browns: New general manager Phil Savage did it the Baltimore way -- he stayed patient and he made solid selections. By being patient, Savage didn't call the Dolphins, who were trying to fleece an extra pick out of them to trade up to No. 2 and take wide receiver Braylon Edwards of Michigan. He didn't rush the selection of quarterback Charlie Frye of Akron and ended up getting one of the steals of the draft in the third round. Brodney Pool was a low first-round talent drafted in the second round at free safety. Savage is changing seven starters on defense, but he knows he can't rush things. Edwards and Frye are the future. Pool will jump in as a starter. It's a great start.

The interesting thing about Charlie Frye is the wide diversity of opinion -- from both the pro and amateur talent scouts -- about his potential in the NFL. Some rate him as the best overall QB in the draft while others say he's overrated at number 3 or 4. Who's right? Truth is, nobody really knows, no matter how sure they are of their own opinions. There are too many variables and intangibles. Some of the greatest players in NFL history were not recognized as such in the draft. Some players peak in college, while others keep on growing. Physical attributes are easily measurable while other attributes are less so. Many years ago I was a college student at a small school in the deep south. There wasn't much to do in that little town, so my Dad and I would go out and sit in the stands and watch football practice. The QB had a certain presence that really impressed us. He had some amazing game performances, but all against small college competition. Still, he was good enough that some said he might go in the first round of the draft. In fact, he was the number one draft pick -- first time a small college QB ever achieved that. You might have guessed by now that it was Terry Bradshaw. I really didn't get to see Charlie Frye play until his senior season. The first time I saw him drop back in the pocket I about fell out of my seat. It was obvious to me that he was an NFL quarterback among college players. The last time I had that feeling was about 35 years ago in Ruston, Louisiana. I think Charlie Frye is the real thing. But I'm just an amateur talent scout, and my opinion counts no more than anyone else's. The fact that Charlie Frye's presence on a football field reminds me so much of Terry Bradshaw is no guarantee that he will make it in the NFL. But I have this gut level feeling that if Charlie Frye continues to want it as badly as he has up to this point in his life, and if he continues to work and improve as he has up to this point in his life, he surely has the potential to be a winning NFL QB. The most critical thing now is that he ends up with a team that can provide the environment for him to continue to grow and improve to the limits of his abilities. That's what I wish most for him, because, above all, I think he is a good person who deserves to be rewarded for giving everything he has to be a winner.

What an incredible PR opportunity! One of these two schools should be phoning the other right now to set up a game early next season. Bill it as the battle of the best two college basketball teams in America to get passed over for post-season tournaments. Send out news releases to all the media. Akron gets a double hit out of this by throwing in the football bowl exclusion. I am not kidding you. I've been a part of, or worked with, the media for more than 35 years. This is a genuinely great "underdog" news story, and news people love underdogs -- especially those who've been screwed by the system.

No problem. The more people who see this the better, so it's good to have the link posted again for those who may not have seen it or checked it out before.

Funny, I linked to this report 3 weeks ago, and even after bumping the thread, no one seemed interested. http://zipsnation.org//index.php?showtopic=1142

At least according to the latest projection at CBS SportsLine: http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/8047103

Hmm. No comments on the detailed scouting report? Had everyone already seen this? Am I just more easily impressed than everyone else?

Found a couple of more interesting links on #5. First is a Pro Football Weekly report on the Senior Bowl that didn't show up in previous Google searches. This is probably the best story yet on #5's performance in the Senior Bowl, as it gets to the game poise and leadership intangibles that are so critical in the NFL. http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/NFLDr...story012905.htm The next link is about the most awesome I've seen to date. Frank Cooney's NFL Draft Scout "provides premium NFL Draft analysis to NFL teams, agents and major media outlets", i.e. members who pay for it. To entice people to sign up, they include free links to extensive scouting reports on two players, and one just happens to be Charlie Frye. When you read this lengthy report, you will understand the level of detail that pro scouts generate. It will also leave absolutely no doubt about who he is being compared most closely to: "He is the classic fan favorite with Brett Favre toughness and mentality." "He is an aggressive playmaker who will sacrifice his body and play with reckless abandon (much like Favre in the early years) to make the play." "Few show the short touch he displays, again drawing comparisons to Favre in this category." "He will stand in vs. the blitz and while he does take a lot of hits, he has the toughness that only Brett Favre can rival." "Compares To: Brett Favre-Green Bay. (Green Bay can find themselves the true successor to Favre by drafting his clone in the first round)." "While junior quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and Alex Smith are more highly touted, I feel that in the long run, Frye will come closest to being a Brett Favre clone than any other passer in this draft." Click on link at the following site that reads Examples: Akron QB Charlie Frye: http://www.nfldraftscout.com/

So, if these 46,546 voters were really the best judges of NFL talent, they'd all be NFL scouts and coaches, right?

To understand what can happen to a great NFL quarterback playing behind a mediocre offensive line, one need only recall the injury-riddled career of Mr. Bernie Kosar.

More story links (check game story after the stats in the first link): http://www.usatoday.com/sports/scores105/1...SOUTH-----0.htm http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/foo...nior-bowl_x.htm http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/news_room/n...rts/3915.0.html

A few interesting Charlie Frye story links: http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/in...80167187810.xml http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/in...80371187810.xml http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/sports/10772074.htm http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/sports/10769333.htm http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/news/s...ts/1925968.html

Final stats did show 10 of 12 passes completed for #5 and not 11 of 12 as CBS Sportsline Live Stats was showing. Don't think that will hurt the impression he made today one bit.