Tag Archives: Matt Millen

Crib Sheet: And We’ll All Float On

a swing

This weekend is the annual float trip weekend and we are super distracted.  The annual event down in the Ozarks leads to all sorts of cathartic releases and gets us ready for the football season to come.  For those of you not in the know, a float trip is basically an all day canoe or raft run down a river with food and beverages.   This can be known as a Booze Cruise.  This year it’s running a little late, but thankfully the weather isn’t too bad, sans any chance for rain.  If you ever get a chance, find the closest river and spend a weekend camping.  It’s a great way to get away.   Here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:

  • Right after the Crib Sheet say the Mountain West Conference’s beef with the BCS wouldn’t be over until the beginning of the college football, a new press release came out last week stating that they finally signed with the BCS on the new television deal.  Wow that was fast.  So they trotted the BCS out to Washington with Utah buddy Orin Hatch to shake them up before finally giving in and signing.  Trying to save face much?  Time to dust the hands off of this topic.
  • Western Carolina junior defensive back Ja’Quayvin Smalls died after a voluntary workout last week.  This may be along the lines of the sickle cell issue that have been the cause of the number one death among college football players in the last decade.  Our condolences go out and we hope that this builds the case even stronger for mandatory sickle cell tests for colleges.
  • We’ve usually ignore player arrests here on the Crib Sheet because, let’s face it,  a player or two gets arrested every week.  Let’s take a look at this.   We’ll give a nice even 100 for the number of division I football teams.  There’s about 50 players per team.   Those are both conservative numbers.  So there are about 5,000 football players.  Take that and add in college life.  There’s about 6 months in the off season.  Two players arrested per week is about 48 players.  Or less than 1% of the total amount of players.  That seems reasonable to us for the college population as a whole.  So while it makes news, there’s nothing exciting about it except that they play a big time sport.
  • ESPN and ABC are switching up announcers this year.  Michael Hiestand points out that Matt Millen will come to the fray and Paul Maguire will be out completely.  WOO HOO!  Maguire was about as bad as announcer as they come.  There’s a reason they dropped him down on the field and didn’t allow him in the booths for the games last year.
  • It looks like after the fiasco of the Bob Krause/Ron Prince fiasco last year and the massive audit fiasco involving the university, Kansas State and their new athletic director John Currie will do what they can to rebuild the fan base.  One such way is to sell 1,989 tickets for $9 at the home opener this year in Massachusetts, in honor of Bill Snyder’s first game as head coach.  It’s a nice little ploy, but the opponent  and the number of tickets for sale don’t do much in terms of a rebuild.  It’s a nice start, but they’re going against a weak non-conference team so chances of a sell out are nill.  Currie and Co. have a long way to go but it’s a decent first step.
  • Urban Meyer let the cat out of the bag this week and told the whole world he’ll never coach for Notre Dame.  Never say never.  Granted Charlie Weiss will have to make a bowl to keep the job, but with what Florida giving Meyer everything he wants, including national titles,  an open Fighting Irish job and a pot of gold won’t be enough.  Then again, he did say never.