Orangeyes Daily Articles for Friday for Football

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Welcome to April Fools' Day!

April Fools' Day (sometimes called All Fools' Day) is celebrated every year on 1 April by playing practical jokes and spreading hoaxes. The jokes and their victims are called April fools. People playing April Fool jokes expose their prank by shouting April Fool. Some newspapers, magazines, and other published media report fake stories, which are usually explained the next day or below the news section in small letters. Although popular since the 19th century, the day is not a public holiday in any country.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392) contains the first recorded association between 1 April and foolishness.

SU News

Players Prepare for Dino Babers' New Offense with Revamped Conditioning (DO; Libonati)

Jordan Fredericks had never seen so many teammates throwing up. More than five or six came out of station drills to get rid of the contents in their stomachs, including Fredericks.

“It might’ve been the first time in football that I’ve ever thrown up three times a day,” Fredericks said. “I just kept throwing up. It got (running backs) coach (Mike) Hart mad, but I felt like I was getting in shape.”

The Syracuse running back hadn’t even taken much time off during Winter Break before coming back to Syracuse. He had wanted to take a week off after coming home, but his mother set him up with his personal trainer in just a handful of days.

“Yeah, I was hurting, too,” offensive lineman Omari Palmer said. “… We came from a team that was huddled up every time to no huddle. That was hard. You gotta do extra stuff, run extra, eat right, just live properly outside of football.”

At 11 a.m. Saturday, SU will put its rapid-fire offense on the Carrier Dome turf for the first time at Syracuse’s annual spring game. When co-offensive coordinator Sean Lewis and Syracuse’s staff created the hashtag #OrangeIsTheNewFast, it became a recruiting tool, but it’s also a message of how SU plans to play, if its offense having the namesake (Baylor) of one of the best quick-strike attacks in the nation isn’t clear enough.

And while the offense’s logistics — its routes, blocking schemes and how it runs — might be a focus on Saturday, the work to shape players into the offense has been intense.

The offense new head coach Dino Babers brought to Syracuse is supposed to require the players to be conditioned at their best. After running 63 plays per game (127th, second to last, in the country) and about two per minute in 2015 under head Scott Shafer and offensive coordinator Tim Lester, the players will be gears in an offensive machine that ran 83.7 plays per game (seventh in the country) and about three plays per minute at Bowling Green in 2015.
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Ranking the ACC's Toughest Schedules in 2016 (athlonsports.com; Kurkjian)

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1. Florida State
Non-Con: Ole Miss*, Charleston Southern, South Florida, Florida
Atlantic Home: Wake Forest, Clemson, Boston College Atlantic Road: Louisville, NC State, Syracuse Crossover: North Carolina, at Miami
The Seminoles open with what is sure to be at least a top-15 team with an explosive offense in Ole Miss, then don’t take on a Power Five opponent at home until the first weekend of October, which happens to be against 2015 Coastal Division champion, North Carolina. Things settle down a bit in November, but finish with a Florida team that even at its lowest point has a roster littered with NFL talent. The only solace is that the toughest opponent on the schedule, Clemson, has to come to Doak Campbell Stadium.
2. Clemson
Non-Con: at Auburn, Troy, South Carolina State, South Carolina
Atlantic Home: Louisville, NC State, Syracuse
Atlantic Road: Boston College, Florida State, Wake Forest Crossover: at Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh Auburn is a bit of a wild card to begin with, and the fact that it’s at Jordan-Hare makes it even trickier. Another potential pitfall is the Thursday night road game at Georgia Tech, both because every Thursday night road game breeds upsets and the Yellow Jackets’ offense isn’t easy to prep for on a short week. Louisville has to come to Death Valley before things become more manageable. A carefully placed bye week offsets the fact that the Tigers travel to Tallahassee this season, after which Clemson should be heavily favored in every game on the schedule.
3. Pittsburgh
Non-Con: Villanova, Penn State, at Oklahoma State, Marshall
Coastal Home: Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Duke
Coastal Road: North Carolina, Virginia, Miami Crossover: at Clemson, Syracuse After what should be a relative layup against Villanova to start the season, September is brutal, with a home date against Penn State and road trips to Oklahoma State and North Carolina – both of whom could be ranked – finishing off the month. October is a little more manageable, but the Panthers drew Clemson as one of their crossovers and it’s in Death Valley. A road trip to Miami and home game against Duke make the final month even tougher, as bowl eligibility may come down to the home game with Syracuse.
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Scheduling Prices Skyrocketing for UI Football (news-gazette.com; Asmussen)

The cost of conducting college football business continues to rise.

At Illinois, the school will pay Lovie Smith — who will guide the Illini through their first spring practice Friday evening — $21 million over the next six seasons. And Smith’s nine-member staff will earn about $3.2 million in 2016.

Scheduling is getting pricey, too.

Eight nonconference teams visiting Memorial Stadium for single games between 2019 and 2022 are guaranteed a total of $8.65 million. Illinois will pay at least $1 million for each, with a high of $1.2 million for Charlotte in a 2021 game.

Four of the games are against teams from the Mid-American Conference, three against Conference USA foes and one from the Mountain West.

Compare the future guarantees to what Illinois had to spend for a game against an FBS opponent in 2015.

Kent State was paid $600,000 to open the 2015 season in Champaign-Urbana. Western Illinois, an FCS school, earned $375,000 for a 2015 appearance.

Starting this upcoming season, Big Ten teams aren’t supposed to schedule games with FCS schools. But that doesn’t apply to schools that already had deals in place. Illinois hosts FCS school Murray State in its 2016 opener and is slated to host Western Illinois in 2018.

Besides Illinois, other Big Ten-FCS school matchups previously scheduled for the 2016 season are:
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Other

April Fools Day: 2016's Best Pranks (and Worst Jokes) Around the Web (PS; Herbert)

Happy April Fools Day 2016!

If you haven't checked your calendar or noticed some weird stuff on the Internet today, it's April 1 -- which means April Fools pranks and jokes around the web.

We've rounded up the best (and worst -- like Google's Mic Drop) gags so far:

New words in the dictionary
Oxford Dictionaries adds words like LOYO ("laughing on your own"); Leo ("to achieve something after years of trying," such as Leonardo DiCaprio winning an Oscar); fanishment (fans blocked on social media by a celebrity); and Obamacar (Pres. Obama's fictional program providing free cars for everyone in America).

Netflix launches John Stamos categories
Because he produced and stars on the streaming site's new original series "Fuller House?" Have mercy.

Virgin America's new logo
Richard Branson's company celebrates April 1 this year by busting out a new logo that male virgins might not recognize.


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It brought a sense of relief to two players who could recall the difficulties of spring camp last year. Strickland was informed of his move to hybrid two or three days before last preseason, and was “a little bit” ticked about it. He was pelted with a variety of unfamiliar terms and routes he had to master.

Philips was more welcoming of the change to an “athlete” position, enamored with the idea of getting his hands on the ball more often. But his mind was boggled trying to balance a playbook dotted with running, blocking and receiving schemes. The “do-it-all” aspect of the do-it-all position quickly became both its greatest compliment and putdown.

“At the end of the day I’m a team player,” Philips said, “but it was a heavy burden. It was a lot of pressure.”

 

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