sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Welcome to Mother Whistler Day!
Have you ever seen this famous painting, calledArrangement in Grey and Black No. 1?
It's by an American artist named James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he began painting this portrait of his other when the model he had scheduled to paint unexpectedly didn't come.
Most people call the painting Whistler's Mother – although that is not its name.
And...this day is not about the painting, and it is not the birthday of J.A.M. Whistler's mother!
Instead, it celebrates anyone who can whistle. So if you can whistle, let one rip right now!
SU News
ACC coaches criticize early signing period, recruiting rule changes (orlandosentinel.com; Murschel)
For Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi, the new college football early signing period in December couldn’t come at a worse time.
The three-day period approved by the NCAA and ratified by the Collegiate Commissioners Association lands in the middle of bowl preparation and the holiday season.
“I have four kids and I don’t think I’ve bought a Christmas gift — my wife does all that. Now I’m going to have to get my kids to buy a gift for my wife,” Narduzzi said during the ACC’s spring meetings Wednesday.
Narduzzi may have been joking, but ACC coaches aren’t laughing about the impact a new early signing period from Dec. 20-22 has on their schedules.
“I was never for that. I always wanted it earlier to take a lot of pressure off kids and coaches,” Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said of allowing recruits to sign letters of intent during the three-day window in December in addition to the traditional signing period that starts the first Wednesday in February.
Fisher had long supported the early signing period being added in August before the start of a high school recruit’s senior season, but NCAA leadership went with the December window instead.
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How does the Hokies' football staff size stack up compared to the rest of the ACC? (roanoke.com; Bitter)
May is the year's nadir for real college football news, so it stands to reason that it's the apex for issue stories about the sport.
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How does that stack up in the ACC? Here's where everyone in the league stood in 2016 (and for teams that don't have grad assistants listed, you can probably just add three or four, as a rule of thumb):
- 37 -- Syracuse
- 35 -- Clemson (no grad assistants listed)
- 33 -- Florida State (no grad assistants listed)
- 33 -- Louisville
- 32 -- N.C. State
- 31 -- North Carolina
- 30 -- Duke
- 29 -- Miami
- 28 -- Virginia (no strength coaches listed)
- 26 -- Virginia Tech (no grad assistants listed)
- 26 -- Boston College
- 25 -- Wake Forest
- 24 -- Pittsburgh (no grad assistants listed)
- 19 -- Georgia Tech ( no grad assistants listed)
- 10 -- Clemson
- 8 -- Syracuse
- 7 -- Florida State
- 6 -- Louisville
- 6 -- North Carolina
- 5 -- Virginia Tech
- 5 -- Virginia
- 5 -- Miami
- 5 -- Wake Forest
- 5 -- Georgia Tech
- 4 -- Pittsburgh
- 4 -- Duke
- 2 -- Boston College
College Football Schedule: SEC, ACC Teams Face Most Difficult Opponents in 2017 (herosports.com; Doughty)
SEC football teams will face three more bowl teams, on average, than Pac-12 teams will during the 2017 college football season.
Though previous records and preseason hype are not an accurate predictors of future success -- as Michigan State rudely found out in 2016 after they plummeted from 12 wins to three, the largest drop in the FBS -- it's still an interesting note on teams and conferences face the most teams who were successful the year before. And in 2017, many of those teams play in the ACC and SEC, whose members face far more opponents coming off good seasons than the other eight conferences.
Eight conference have an opponents' winning percentage above .500 but the ACC and SEC are the only two above .550. They're also the only two whose members, on average, play more than seven teams with a winning record and more than eight teams who made a bowl appearance.
MORE: Are "Better" Schools More Selective With Football Scholarship Offers?
The Big 12 is the only power conference who's eclipsed by any Group of Five conference in any of the three categories (opponent win percentage, opponents with a winning record, opponents with bowl appearances). While they have a higher opponent winning percentage than the Mountain West, the 12-team Mountain West has a higher number of average opponents with a winning record and higher number of average opponents with a bowl appearance.
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Preview 2017: Miami, Get To The ACC Championship Already (collegefootballnews.com; Fiutak)
It’s not like Miami has been bad.
By almost all reasonable standards, and considering the drama and a few NCAA issues, the program has been above-average ever since it last ruled the world in the early 2000s.
Bowl appearances have been a regular thing, and it’s been an entertaining product at times, but for college football fans of a certain age, this isn’t Miami – and it can never be again.
It’s hard to put into proper context to anyone under around, say, 30, what the Miami Hurricanes meant to the sports world from around 1985 up until George Teague stripped the ball away from Lamar Thomas in Alabama’s 34-13 1993 Sugar Bowl/national title win.
(If you want to see what the end of Part One of a dynasty looks like … )
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Cordell Hudson's Worst Nightmare
ACC's Best Quarterback Matchups of 2017 (athlonsports.com; Fischer)
Florida State's Deondre Francois will get multiple opportunities to show why he's on the ACC's top signal-callers this fall
It goes without saying that you need a good quarterback in order to be a successful college football team. While it may not wholly determine a team’s success each season if they have a quality signal-caller behind center, one doesn’t become a consistent winner without a quarterback making all the throws and executing the right decisions on offense.
That’s why the position is so important across college football and a big reason why each quarterback matchup is highlighted on the schedule each week of the season. Heading into 2017, a strong group of returning starters and a handful of big-time transfers across the country make for some extremely enticing meetings that are worth circling on the calendar. We made life a little easy on you and did just that for most major conferences so you know just what to watch for when teams hit the field this year.
The ACC has really been a league that has elevated itself thanks to strong quarterback play in recent years and this season’s crop will once again be an impressive one at the top with some quality depth to boot. With that in mind, here are the top 10 signal-caller matchups involving conference teams for 2017:
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The ACC boasts the National Champions of college football and college basketball and league commissioner John Swofford expounds on the virtues of the strength of the conference in his sit-down interview with the ACC Digital Network's Wes Bryant during the ACC Spring Meetings. Swofford discusses the prominence of the league's football programs as well looks ahead to some exciting non-conference matchups to star the 2017 college football season.
Other
2017 NYS Fair: Kansas to play free Chevy Court concert on Senior Day (PS; Tulloch)
The New York State Fair has booked Kansas at Chevy Court.
The progressive rock band will perform at 8 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 28.
Kansas has been on an extension of its 40th-anniversary celebration tour of "Leftoverture," the band's 1976 breakout album.
The platinum-selling release featured "Carry On Wayward Son," the band's first Top 40 hit. Two years later, the "garage band" from Topeka charted again with "Point of Know Return" and "Dust in the Wind."
They went on to sell more than 30 million albums worldwide.
"Progressive rock fans are in for a treat," said NYS Fair acting director Troy Waffner. "Not only are these songs that people know by heart, but the musicianship of Kansas is outstanding. They've been great every time they've been here and I know they'll be great again."
Kansas still makes new music. The band released its first album in 16 years, "The Prelude Implicit," last fall. Billboard reports they will record another in 2018.
This will be Kansas' fourth appearance at the fair and the first since 2010.
The band plays on the first of two Senior Days, in which all seniors receive free admission. There is also a special promotion on the Wade Shows Midway, called Midway Monday, which offers a wristband good for 10 rides for $10.
Other free concerts announced for the 2017 Chevy Court lineup include:
- Robert Randolph, 2 p.m., Aug. 23
- 3 Doors Down, 8 p.m., Aug. 23
- The Fabulous Thunderbirds, 2 p.m., Aug. 25
- Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone, 2 p.m., Aug. 28
- Marshall Tucker Band, 2 p.m., Aug. 29
- Taylor Dayne, 2 p.m., Aug. 30
- LeAnn Rimes, 8 p.m., Aug. 31
- Spin Doctors, 2 p.m., Sept. 3
