sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Beware the Ides of March!
The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martiae, Late Latin: Idus Martii) is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
SU News
Kelly Bryant
Roundtable: Which ACC player needs a big spring? (ESPN; Adelson)
All week, ACC reporters Andrea Adelson, David Hale and Jared Shanker discuss the most pressing spring storylines for teams across the conference. Up next for debate: Which ACC player needs a big spring?
Andrea Adelson: Clemson QB Kelly Bryant
Is it any surprise two of the three players we’re highlighting are Clemson quarterbacks? That alone shows how important the winner of this competition will be on a national scale.
Coach Dabo Swinney has declared Kelly Bryant ahead of his competitors in the race to replace Deshaun Watson. And really, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering Bryant has more experience than Zerrick Cooper and Hunter Johnson. But coaches aren’t going to just hand Bryant the starting job based on his experience advantage.
Bryant needs a big spring to separate himself from Cooper and Johnson and declare himself definitively the only choice at quarterback. The first big scrimmage is this week, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that Bryant needs a better performance than anybody on that field.
All eyes are going to be on whomever replaces Watson. Clemson isn’t expecting a complete replica, nor is anybody else. But the Tigers’ ACC and College Football Playoff hopes hinge on what ends up happening at quarterback, and it’s fair to say that the entire offense would be much better off without indecision at the marquee spot on the field. If Bryant wins it fair and square, both he and his teammates will have an entire offseason without any doubts lingering. He’s got the edge now. Bryant has to find a way to hold onto it.
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CBS Sports analyst: "Clemson won't challenge for the ACC" - TigerNet.com (tigernet.com; video; Crumpton)
Video Description: CBS Sports College Football writer Dennis Dodd joins Jorge Andres with his college football offseason updates.
CBS Sports College Football analyst Dennis Dodd said that Clemson won't challenge for the ACC title in 2017 in the following video.
He also commented that the Clemson football program was going through "a complete rebuild" this upcoming season.
Pitt, Georgia Tech feature toughest nonconference schedules in ACC (orlandosentinel.com; Murschel)
The ACC won a league-record 51 non-conference games last season including a record of 20-11 against teams from Power 5 conferences. The league faces another tough slate of opponents in 2017. Here is a look at the ACC nonconference schedules ranked from toughest to weakest.
Pittsburgh
Sept. 2 vs. Youngstown State; Sept. 9 at Penn State; Sept. 16 vs. Oklahoma State; Sept. 30 vs. Rice
For a Panthers team that returns just 10 starters from last season, the month of September must feel like a daunting challenge. Pitt opens up at home against Youngstown State – the runner-up in the Football Championship Subdivision national championship game. That’s followed by a trip to Happy Valley to take on an improving Penn State team before returning home to take on Oklahoma State. Rice provides the only relief for Pat Narduzzi’s teams before heading into the conference schedule.
Georgia Tech
Sept. 4 vs. Tennessee; Sept. 9 vs. Jacksonville State; Sept. 16 at UCF; Nov. 25 vs. Georgia
Georgia Tech opens up the season at home – or close to it – in Atlanta’s new Mercedes-Benz Stadium against Tennessee. The Yellow Jackets have lost six of the last eight meeting between SEC opponents. The team returns home to take on FCS foe Jacksonville State before heading back on the road to take on UCF, a program they’ve won three straight against. Tech will wrap things up against in-state rival Georgia on Thanksgiving weekend – looking for just its second win in the past seven games.
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Boston College football looks at areas for improvement at spring practice (bostonherald.com; Thompson)
Boston College opens spring practice today under the bubble at Alumni Stadium in the afterglow of the Eagles’ first bowl victory since 2007.
The Eagles return 16-of-22 starters and half of the key special teams personnel from the team’s 36-30 victory against Maryland in the Quick Lane Bowl at Ford Field in Detroit.
BC coach Steve Addazio said Monday the good feelings from that postseason triumph carried into the offseason conditioning program.
“The emotional momentum coming off the end of the season for our players was just really fantastic,” he said. “You could feel it all winter long. We had as good a winter as we’ve ever had. The players’ vibe, their energy, their attention to detail, I think it was very uplifting for them.”
BC finished 7-6 but was 2-6 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Eagles need to forge a solid foundation in the spring if they expect to be competitive in a league that produced national champion Clemson and Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson of Louisville.
Here are BC’s three areas of concern:
Passing attack
The Eagles have not had a prolific passer since Chase Rettig threw for 3,065 yards in 2012. BC finished 14th in the ACC with 149.1 passing yards per game. Graduate transfer Patrick Towles completed 138-of-273 passes for 1,730 yards with 12 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
BC opens spring ball with two inexperienced, dual-threat quarterbacks competing for the starting job in redshirt sophomore Darius Wade and redshirt freshman Anthony Brown.
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This 507-team college football transitive victory wheel is amazing (sbnation.com; Moriarty)
The transitive win property is an interesting concept. Essentially, it’s a way of comparing teams through common opponents.
Take, for example, Tennessee last season. The Volunteers, ahem, the team Butch Jones proclaimed were “Champions of Life,” lost to Vanderbilt, which proceeded to lose to NC State. Using transitive wins, that means the Wolfpack are now the real Champions of Life.
A user on Reddit’s college football hub decided to create a 507-team “Circle of Suck” for the 2016 season, and it’s quite possibly the biggest transitive victory wheel ever created. (Yes, this is a thing lots of college football fans do online each season. There’s even a site that lets you figure out a way to argue that your Division II team was actually better than Clemson last year, based on nothing but transitive victories.)
The list starts with national champ Clemson and shows the Tigers were the only team to beat Alabama, which beat Washington, and so on, wrapping all the way through the NCAA’s three divisions and including NAIA teams before working back around to Pitt, which was the only team to beat Clemson.
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Other
As Central NY digs out from winter storm, lake effect snow and wind kick in (PS; Coin)
After 20 inches or more of snow pummeled Central New York on Tuesday, there's more on the way today.
The nor'easter is moving out, but as often happens, lake effect snow is being pulled in. Syracuse could get 8 to 12 inches more snow today. Today's snow will be lighter.
al New York could see another 8 to 12 inches of lake effect snow today, on top of the 18.9 inches of snow recorded Tuesday.National Weather Service
Strong northwest winds, with gusts up to 35 mph, could create whiteouts and make driving conditions dangerous today. Onondaga County has extended its travel advisory until 5 p.m. today.
Wind chills will remain in the single digits all day, and could dip below zero tonight.
Snow will taper off today, but winds could continue through Thursday afternoon.
Today's snow will fall on Tuesday's total of 18.9 inches, measured at Hancock International Airport. That would have been a record for the date had it not been for the Blizzard of '93, which dumped 19.9 inches on March 14.
The biggest total reported so far was 41 inches in Bridgewater, in southern Oneida County. Leonardsville, in Madison County, reported 34 inches. Many spots across Upstate New York are reporting 30 inches or more of snow.
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