NCAA Bistrot

certains ont déjà du le lire dans les power rankings de CNNSI

Citation :

When I visit schools outside the South, I'm always amused at how much people think they care about college football. They couldn't possibly comprehend how much people care about college football in Alabama. Here's an example from the news team at WSFA. Four guys got into a Cessna in Mobile Saturday to fly to Tuscaloosa to attend the Ole Miss game. Over my mom's hometown of Selma, both engines failed. The pilot and co-pilot saw a road cutting through a cotton field below and maneuvered for an emergency landing. The wings hit trees on the way down, but the plane and everyone inside survived the impact. So what did the men do after narrowly escaping death? First, they prayed. Then, when most would have arranged a pickup for their extremely expensive wrecked vehicle, found a ride home and thanked their lucky stars to be alive, they left their plane in the middle of a cotton field and hitched a ride to Montgomery, where they rented a car and drove to Bryant-Denny Stadium to watch Alabama steamroll Ole Miss. No, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 fans, you don't care as much as these people. You never will.

Ca c'est une histoire qui m'éclate

Entre les PO, les réalignements de conférences, bref les changements en NCAA, je me suis dit que c'était le moment de laisser un article sur ce qui est pour moi l'un des plus gros changement en NCAA il y a un peu plus de 30 ans, le passage en FCS de l'Ivy League.
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Les raisons sont assez simples :

- Refus de donner des scholarships
- Refus de jouer plus de 10 matchs par an pour préserver l'intérêt académique. D'ailleurs, l'Ivy League refuse toujours de jouer les PO en FCS.

L'article date un peu (2006) mais il est assez intéressant :

Citation :

With a 9-1 record, the 1981 Yale football team was one of the best in the East and was briefly ranked in the nation’s top 20. The team produced three National Football League draft picks and averaged nearly 39,000 fans at home games.

Yale and other Ivy League teams dominated regional competition, a model of college football functioning in a demanding academic environment.

But less than a month after the 1981 season ended, the Ivy League was expelled from big-time college football. In a squabble over television revenue, the eight Ivy institutions were demoted to the N.C.A.A.’s Division I-AA. Given the chance to appeal, the Ivy League presidents did not protest and instead willingly walked away from the highest level of a game their teams created.

Twenty-five years later, that quiet act of rebellion stands out all the more in the increasingly commercial world of major college sports. Ivy League leaders say they have protected the academic stature of their institutions, avoided the stain of recruiting and classroom scandals, and nurtured athletics as a truly amateur endeavor.

“Thank goodness,” said Derek Bok, Harvard’s president in 1981 and its interim president now. “The quality of football is not the primary objective of the institution.”

But there have been tradeoffs: fewer victories, diminished television exposure, disappointed alumni and dwindling attendance. On the eve of tomorrow’s annual Harvard-Yale game, the wisdom of the 1981 downsizing of football is still broadly debated.

“It has been painful to watch the unnecessary atrophy of the league,” said John Rogan, Yale’s quarterback in 1981.

Yale’s athletic director, Thomas Beckett, said: “The Ivy League should have remained in the top division of college football. We still play quality football with gifted students, but it would have been a wonderful way to continue a worthy tradition.”

Carm Cozza, Yale’s football coach from 1965 to 1996, still keeps his office on campus, a wood-paneled den filled with photographs of a packed Yale Bowl.

“We might average less than 20,000 for our games this season,” Cozza, 76, said last week. “We used to have that for a scrimmage. I’m exaggerating, but not much.”

Others see in the Ivy League’s lower football profile a collegiate athletic ideal, and they ponder if some major football colleges chose the wrong fork in the road.

“In the largest football group, I see so many serious problems and a real loss of confidence in academic integrity,” said Hunter R. Rawlings III, Cornell’s president from 1995 to 2003 and the university’s interim president in 2005-6. Rawlings was also president at the University of Iowa for seven years. “The Ivy League is better off making it clear what it values most,” he said.

The debate intensifies when the Ivy League is compared with institutions like Stanford, Northwestern, Duke and the service academies, which still compete in Division I-A and adhere to high academic credentials. It is often suggested that the Ivy teams could have maintained their Division I-A status, which would have likely boosted recruiting and attendance, while playing league opponents and a mix of games against institutions with similar academic standards.

Some Ivy athletic administrators, like Beckett, dream of a football schedule that contains the service academies and a select few other top-tier teams. Already, Yale plans to play Army in 2010 and 2012. Steve Bilsky, the athletic director at Pennsylvania, mentioned Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and the service academies and said: “You can envision the situation where those schools and the Ivies might find some common ground that’s comfortable. That’s a long-term solution that offers some appeal.”

But such change would buck 50 years of ever-increasing Ivy League football isolationism. The league began formal play in 1956 with the intent of separating itself from national football powers that its members feared were taking the sport too seriously.

“Since the 1950s, the Ivy League has been relatively consistent, and maybe that’s the point,” said James Wright, president of Dartmouth. “We haven’t changed fundamentally. The others have.”

Indeed, the Ivy League prohibits its football champion from participating in the relatively low-key Division I-AA national championship playoffs. In all other Ivy League sports, from fencing to field hockey, teams are allowed to compete for an N.C.A.A.-recognized national championship, and that is at the top level of Division I.

“Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship,” Bok said when asked why football is kept out of the postseason playoffs. “And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. That’s how even responsible institutions end up doing things they don’t like doing.”

With that kind of thinking dominating the positions of leadership, a scenario in which the Ivy League would step up in class to join Division I-A football programs like Stanford or the service academies seems unlikely.

Jeff Orleans, the Ivy League’s executive director, said, “For those who wonder why we didn’t stay in Division I-A as Duke, Stanford and Northwestern did, I would ask, what do you think of their football experience this year?”

Duke’s football team is 0-10 this season. Stanford is 1-9 and Northwestern is 3-8.

“One could argue,” Orleans said, “that the Ivy League has had the better football experience than those institutions have had for the last 25 years. You might want to ask why they didn’t do what we did.”

But others say Ivy League football is too central to the game’s history to be in its current position. The teams were perennial national champions from 1869 to 1939 and were still nationally ranked well into the 1970s, but now they frequently lose to less established programs with no national reputation. More demoralizing might be that these games are often played in storied locations like the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium before crowds that fill only one-fourth of the seats.

“It’s depressing when you can walk up to one of those great old Ivy League places 15 minutes before game time and buy a ticket without even waiting in line,” said Joe Restic, who coached at Harvard for 23 seasons beginning in 1971. “It all started with the I-AA classification. Right away the recruits said to us, ‘I don’t want to play with the second-class citizens.’

“The Ivy presidents should have fought it. A great institution should try to excel in whatever it undertakes. We didn’t have to play Notre Dame, but we should have held the line so we could still compete with our traditional nonleague rivals. Instead, before the season started I could look at the schedule and see three games where I knew our chances of losing were very high.”

From 1956 to 1981, the eight Ivy League teams had a .562 winning percentage against nonleague opponents, and those games often included prominent national football programs — Penn would play Penn State, for example. From 1982 through 2006, the league had a .453 winning percentage against outside opponents. And in most cases, schedules have been downgraded — Cornell has played Albany and Columbia has faced Iona.

Attendance has dwindled as well since 1981. During the 2005 season, the average attendance for Ivy League games was 9,606, a drop of 30 percent from 25 years ago.

This season, thanks to a close race between Yale and Princeton for the Ivy championship, league attendance is expected to rise above 10,000 fans a game, and the Ivy teams have had an unusually successful season against nonleague teams this year, winning 16 of 24 games.

The current Ivy football coaches, none of whom were coaching in 1981, look back and concede the league has changed since it was reclassified. But they also point to a number of other factors that brought change, like higher admissions standards, escalating tuition costs and an incoming class that is more female and more international, leaving less room for football players.

“Go back 25 years, the average SAT scores for all Yale students might have been in the low 1300s,” Yale Coach Jack Siedlecki said. “Now that score is nearly 1500. We are required to recruit kids who generally fit that range.”

The Ivy League, which has never given out athletic scholarships, has a complex statistical rubric for all its athletic recruits called the Academic Index, which converts high school grades or class rank and test scores into a single number assigned to each recruit. There is a minimum Academic Index number allowed for admission, and each institution is allowed only a certain number of recruited athletes at the lowest range of the acceptable index. The information on athletes’ index numbers and the total admitted is shared among the league members.

Before the index’s implementation in the early 1980s, Cozza routinely had 50 recruits yearly at Yale. Siedlecki now receives only 30, and because of additional restrictions imposed by the Ivy presidents a few years ago, Siedlecki gets just two recruits from the lowest range of the index. At one point, he might have gotten four or five times as many.

Another shift has been financial.

“I wonder if the biggest obstacle now isn’t the monetary burden,” said Fred Leone, captain of the 1981 Yale team. “When I went to Yale, I might have been putting my parents out $3,000 a year by going there instead of getting a football scholarship somewhere else. Now, if a recruit has a scholarship offer somewhere, Yale is asking him to give it up and pay maybe $35,000 a year. That’s going to lose you a lot of recruits.”

One of those who turned down a scholarship offer, from Oregon State, is Brig Walker, a senior linebacker at Princeton.

“It was an anguishing time because every kid dreams of playing before 100,000 people in a big bowl game,” Walker said in the moments after Princeton upset Yale last weekend. “I’m told they used to sell out the Yale Bowl with 75,000 fans, right?

“That would have been pretty fun. But I’m happy now with my decision. I guess you can’t have it both ways.”

Yale tackle Ed McCarthy stood not far from Walker. McCarthy’s father, John, played for Yale’s undefeated 1968 team.

“I know the level of play is no longer what it was,” said McCarthy, an all-Ivy and all-Ivy academic team selection. “I read the other day that Yale’s Rich Diana finished 10th in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1981. That’s not happening anymore.

“Obviously, it would be nice right now to be playing for one of the nation’s top teams, to not be a I-AA team. Maybe it comes down to what you’re willing to sacrifice. The Ivy League wanted to keep the legitimacy of its ideals. It cost us football status. But what has it cost the big-time football schools?”

Merci, je m'étais déjà demandé pourquoi aucune université de l'Ivy League était en I-A. Je me doutais des raisons derrière, mais avec la présence de Stanford ou Duke, la question se posait quand même. Intéressant en tous cas sur la volonté d'indépendance de ces universités face au business du sport universitaire aujourd'hui. Et encore plus intéressant quand on lit l'article sur le passage de Maryland en Big Ten pour des raisons purement financières et sur les réalignements de manière générale.

Maintenant que j'ai trouvé la vidéo qui va avec, je vais pouvoir le poster, j'ai découvert une règle pendant le Oregon/Kansas St, le 1-point safety.

Fallait y penser à çà et bien connaître le réglement.

Même si je suis plutôt pour la règle NFL, où seulement l'attaque peut marquer du premier coup.

J'ai pas qu'ils ont engagé comme recruteur à Ole Miss, mais ils sont entrain de faire un gros coup au National Signing Day en signant le #1 et le # du ESPN 150

Eux qui été plutôt habitué à finir vers la 25è place au niveau du recrutement, ils sont actuellement projetés à la 5è place.

Comme notre scout NCAA préféré est en train de débouler les pistes, je me permets de le contourner.
Ce joueur a reçu sa deuxième proposition de bourse il y'a peu (LSU puis Bama).

La particularité est que ce garçon arrive en 8th grade, soit la 4ème.
Quand on voit les dimensions du garçon, ça fait peur déjà: 6'1, 215 pounds.

Et quand on le regarde jouer, y'a une sacrée différence de taille entre lui et les autres, on dirait un Jonah Lomu qui déboule dans le couloir face à Dominici (et j'ai étalé ici là les 3/4 de ma culture d'ovalie).

David Fangupo, RB d'hawai'i qui vient d'être recruté par la fac d'Hawai'i justement, devrait te plaire alors, dans le genre joueur de rugby qui se met au foot us, c'est pas mal :

Avec les 7 catholics de la Big East, qui partent de la conférence avec en gradant le nom pour 100 millions de $

Le Big East Football pense à prendre un nouveau nom.

America 12 serait l'un des favoris, ca démontre l'envie d'avoir 12 équipes, et avec America de s'ouvrir à tout les USA, sans restriction à l'Est

Article interessant Un français en Ncaa

Ce jeune jouait deja en HS en lousiane et a également fait la campagne de Austin avec l'edf Junior.

Auburn, dans la daube?

Citation :

Over two years after Gene Chizik, Cam Newton, et al hoisted the crystal football, allegations of misconduct continue to dog the Auburn football program.

According to a report titled “Auburn’s Tainted Title: Victims, Violations and Vendettas for Glory” from former New York Times and Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts on her new website Roopstigo.com, Chizik and/or his coaching staff — and/or his predecessors — were responsible for multiple violations of NCAA bylaws including impermissible benefits and academic fraud.

The story ostensibly centers on former Tigers defensive back Mike McNeil, one of four ex-AU football players charged with armed robbery in March of 2011. McNeil was one of a handful of former players quoted on the record for Roberts’ piece, a group that included wide receiver Darvin Adams, defensive end Mike Blanc, defensive end Antoine Carter and defensive back Neiko Thorpe. Other unnamed sources were utilized in the story, on which AU officials have thus far declined to comment.

McNeil, who’s scheduled to go on trial later this month and faces 21 years to life in prison if convicted, leveled most but not all of the accusations included in the article. Some of those include:

– After being rebuffed by his computer science instructor and that instructor’s supervisor in an attempt to get a grade changed, McNeil claims he went to an athletic department counselor with his problem. “Within days… the grade was changed from an F to a C and he did not miss a game,” Roberts wrote. Additionally, three of the players claimed that nine players, including star running back Michael Dyer, should not have played in the BCS championship game against Oregon in January of 2011 because they were academically ineligible. “Auburn found a way to make those dudes eligible,” Blanc was quoted as saying.

– Adams, who set an SEC championship game record with 217 receiving yards that sent the Tigers to the BCS title game, claimed that he was offered financial incentives — McNeil and Blanc claimed it was several thousands of dollars — by the AU coaching staff to return to the Tigers for the 2011 season. Instead, Adams turned pro early and went undrafted.
– Following “a difficult day at practice in 2007,” McNeil claims that then-defensive coordinator and current Florida head coach Will Muschamp handed him $400 in cash and asked, “is this enough? Is this good?” Through a UF spokesperson, Muschamp, who left AU for Texas following that season, denied such a payment was made.

– McNeil claimed that he was given $500 to host 2008 recruit and eventual 2009 Alabama signee Dre Kirkpatrick — the NCAA limit is $50. “If I’m a star player and I’m a likable person, and a recruit comes in at my position, then, of course, I’m going to take him under my wing,” McNeil said in the article. “If a star recruit was in town, you would get a lot more than the NCAA limit.

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/03/more-accusations-leveled-against-auburns-football-program/

Goobye Big East, Welcome AAC (American Athletic Conference)

Changement de nom, vu que le Catholic 7 du Basket part avec l'appellation Big East, mais au moins ca permettra de mieux se fondre dans la masse des petites conférences, depuis leur chute libre des dernières années

Cam a écrit:

Article interessant Un français en Ncaa

Ce jeune jouait deja en HS en lousiane et a également fait la campagne de Austin avec l'edf Junior.

Ce petit gars est un très bon copain de mon fils. Ils étaient en 3è ensemble à Duruy dans le 7è.

Personne parle de l'arrivée de Play-Offs ?

J'allais le faire

Nouveau nom, CFP sera moins détourné que BCS sans doute

College Football Playoffs, le nom est simple, il y a même un site pour voter pour le logo.

http://www.collegefootballplayoff.com/

Ils ont même pas consulté Tak pour çà, c'est leur première grosse erreur

Si ce qui est annoncé est suivi, c'est top

http://fr-sideline.blogspot.fr/2013/05/encore-plus-de-match-ncaa-en-europe.html

J'ai hate de voir Bama et Auburn débarquer...ce qui donnerait un truc du genre "Nous partîmes 500 (de Dublin ou autres), mais par un prompt renfort (des autorités anti drogues européennes)nous nous vîmes 50 en arrivant à l'aéroport de Miami.

Bon ça m'a fait drôlement marrer après tout. Mais plus sérieusement, c'est pas une mauvaise idée en soit, surtout si ça permet de poser un stand d'information pour certaines universités et se récupérer des étudiants potentiels. Ca me rappelle l'antenne de University of Chicago plantée pas loin de chez l'un de mes clients. Vu la taille des locaux, ça doit être un stand d'info plus qu'autre chose.

Ils parlent déjà de Penn State - UCF à Dublin en 2014

C'est le Doc qui ne va pas être content :

Citation :

Starting quarterback Everett Golson is no longer enrolled at Notre Dame, the university confirmed in an email to ESPN.com on Saturday night.

The Chicago Tribune, citing two sources, reported that Golson is no longer enrolled at the university due to a resident life violation.

Celui qui doit être triste, c'est Gunner Kiel qui a décidé de partir à Cincinnati pace qu'il pensait qu'il ne verrait pas le terrain avec Gholston accroché au poste de titulaire.

What the hell is "resident life violation"???
Je le sentais pas ce Golson......

Comme ça à l'arrache, ça doit être un problème de dortoir...le monsieur aurait amené une présence féminine?

Bon quand tu regrdes cet après midi, ils parlent aussi d'academic violations. Ce qui paratrait plus logique vu que les joueurs de ND sont recrutés avec un niveau académique plus faible que les autres étudiants, ça collerait un peu plus.


Mais sinon, les resident life violation, ca va de l'alcool dans les dortoirs à la marijuana. Sachant que ca serait une faute passible de se faire virer, je pencherais plus pour la seconde.


Bref, dans tout les cas, l'an pochain il reste Tommy Rees en senior, celui qui s'est fait benché au profit de Gholston justement. Derrière ça, tu as un senior qui n'a jamais joué et un true freshman, Malik Zaire. Bref, ça risuqe d'être léger pour cette saison en attaque. Surtout avec l'un des Rbs qui est parti pour la draft aussi, tout comme Eifert qui était le meilleur receveur de l'équipe.

adauphin a écrit:

Je le sentais pas ce Golson......

moi non plus je l'ai pas aimé sur ce que j'ai vu,

mais c'est vrai que c'est con : Gunner Kiel... çà tuait comme nom de QB.

Ouais le problème c'est pas la perte de Golson ( répète après moi Xerios, GOLSON......et pas comme le Vernon ), c'est pas comme si on perdait Johnny Manziel là....non le problème c'est qu'on a pas grand chose d'autre à se mettre sous la dent après le départ de Kiel.
A moins que le Malik congo belge soit la solution.....

adauphin a écrit:

Ouais le problème c'est pas la perte de Golson ( répète après moi Xerios, GOLSON......et pas comme le Vernon ), c'est pas comme si on perdait Johnny Manziel là....non le problème c'est qu'on a pas grand chose d'autre à se mettre sous la dent après le départ de Kiel.
A moins que le Malik congo belge soit la solution.....

Qu'est ce que tu veux, il passait tellement de temps à courir en dehors et dans sa poche que je n'ai jamais réussi à lire son nom distinctement.

Bon en même temps Notre Dame ne perd pas Manziel, mais perd quand même le mec qui vient de les amener en finale nationale et qui devait être le starter pendant encore 2 ou 3 ans. Golson a peut être pas été monstrueux, mais il fait une saison super solide pour un freshman, surtout que lui n'avait pas les atouts de Manziel non plus (deux top10 OT entre autres) autour de lui. Je veux bien qu'on ne le trouve pas génial, mais si maintenant on ne se satisfait pas de performances comme celles là pour un freshman, ça risque de poser problème.

Et le plus inquiétant pour ND, c'est qu'ils ont perdu en gros 80% de leur attaque en off season : Golson, Eifert et Theo Riddick qui était quand même le RB numéro 1 de l'équipe.

Tu perds ton QB starter, ton meileur receveur et RB numéro 1, ça laisse des espaces à combler pour la saison suivante, même quand tu as les capacités de recrutement de ND.

Sinon pour le poste de QB, j'ai du mal à voir un true freshman prendre les reines de l'équipe en week 1. Surtout que si le premier match c'est que Temple, il faut se coltiner Michigan et Michigan St dans les trois semaines qui suivent. Je pense que Kelly aimerait pouvoir le Redshirt et faire la saison avec Tommy Rees qui après tout était le starter au début de la saison dernière.

ND serait aussi en bonne position pour récupérer Wes Lunt, ancien QB de Okie St qui est sur le marché des transferts. Cela servirait à avoir une compétition l'an prochain entre Zaire et lui par exemple.

La seule bonne nouvelle pour ND, c'est qu'en regardant le schedule, on se dit qu'en dehors de Stanford qui va encore être au top, le reste est plutôt pas trop effrayant et les noms ronflants que sont USC, Michigan, Michigan St ou Oklahoma ne sont pas dans une forme Olympique et ont tous perdus leur leaders pendant la dernière off season (Leveon Bell, Denard Robinson, Matt Barkley, Robert Woods, Landry Jones, DJ FLuker, Lane Jonhson, etc...)