Orangeyes Daily Articles for Wednesday for Football

[sutomcat]

Welcome to the Spring Equinox!

The equinox is being celebrated around the world - heralding autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the south. What is an equinox and how does it work, asks Justin Parkinson.

The name equinox means "equal night" in Latin. It's theoretically the day of the year when all points on the earth's surface experience the same lengths of daylight and darkness - 12 hours of each. The autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere (it's the spring equinox for the southern hemisphere) always falls on 22, 23 or 24 September.

Imagine the earth orbiting the sun in a flat plane - ie as if it was pinned on the edge of a slightly elliptical disc. It spins on its axis as it does so - each turn making a day. But the earth also constantly tilts at an angle of 23.5 degrees to that flat plane as it orbits the sun.

SU News

Syracuse is the Only Team in ACC to Accomplish This (247sports.com; McAllister)

The Syracuse Orange is taking over the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Did you know that they are the only program in the conference to accomplish a significant feat? Syracuse made a bowl game (Camping World Bowl) after the football team went 9-3 during the regular season. The men's basketball program just earned an eight seed in the West region of the NCAA Tournament. The women's basketball program earned a three seed (the highest in program history) in the NCAA Tournament Portland region. Syracuse is the only ACC school to do all three of those during the 2018-19 season.

That is quite amazing when you think about it. Even Notre Dame, who's football program is technically not part of the conference, did not accomplish all three as their men's basketball team failed to make the NCAA Tournament. Combine that with a nationally ranked men's and women's lacrosse program and the women's ice hockey team making their first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history, and safe to say things are looking up for Syracuse Athletics.
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Syracuse Football: Ryan Guthrie shines bright at Cuse Pro Day (itlh.com; Esden Jr)

Former Syracuse football linebacker Ryan Guthrie excelled in the biggest job interview of his life at the Cuse Pro Day. Here are all the details.

What a remarkable college career for Syracuse football linebacker Ryan Guthrie. He started his college career at Ellsworth Community College and in those two years, he played in 24 total games, registering 266 tackles, 12.5 sacks, and accumulating 10 turnovers.

After putting up video game numbers in community college he made the transition to Syracuse for his final two years of eligibility. In his JUCO junior season on the hill, he was scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on before everything finally clicked in his senior season:

All-ACC Second Team
Led the ACC with 107 total tackles, including 66 solo stops
Started all 13 games at middle linebacker
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My Draft Story: Tommy Myers (neworleanssaints.com; video)

My Draft Story: Tommy Myers

Former Saints safety Tommy Myers reflects on his NFL Draft experience as he was selected in the third round out of the Syracuse University in 1972.

Virginia Tech football spring preview: Linebackers (gobblercountry.com; Manning)

In the last three years, the Hokies have added Dylan Rivers, Jaylen Griffin, Rayshard Ashby, Dax Hollifield, Rico Kearney, Alan Tisdale and Keshon Artis. The good news is all of these players return with the exception of Kearney who transferred late in the season after being upset with the coaching staff. Kearney filled in for Ashby and had a big game and felt he should remain in the starting lineup.

As you know in Bud Foster’s scheme, he employs a mike linebacker, outside linebacker (‘backer) and a whip linebacker. We included the whip linebacker position in the DB group because it is a hybrid position of safety/linebacker.

Ashby, Rivers and Hollifield received the most playing time last season. Foster trusts Ashby as the mike linebacker. The junior from Richmond led the Hokies in tackles last season and finished third in the ACC. He should continue his role as the mike linebacker.

Hollifield, the star freshman from Shelby, N.C., mostly played the ‘backer position last fall that was formerly filled by Tremaine Edmunds. Hollifield shined at times and it’s easy to see why the coaches are excited about him. Hollifield can do a lot of things and there is some who believe mike linebacker could be his best position.
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https://n./news/transfer-portal-impact-grading-the-acc (rivals; Wommack)

The addition of the transfer portal to college football has been one of the biggest developments in recent years, as players now have more information than ever when it comes to seeking a new school to attend. Instead of getting permission from their current schools in order to transfer, and in many cases being blocked from certain schools, players now have the ability to transfer to another school freely.

Pretty much every team in college football has been touched by the portal in one way or another, whether it’s players coming or going, and it’s only likely to continue once depth charts shake out after spring football.With that in mind, we went through every name that has been publicly tied to the portal (the actual portal database isn’t public).

This week, we are grading each Power Five conference based on the impact of the transfers gained or lost by each programs. Today we examine the ACC.

BOSTON COLLEGE

Additions: TE Danny Dalton (Penn State), OL Hayden Mahoney (Miami)

Subtractions: QB Johnny Langan (Rutgers)

Currently in the Portal: None

Grade: B -- The Eagles have added two players from fellow Power Five programs, with both expected to contribute right away in 2019. Langan is a loss of depth in the quarterback room, but he wasn't expected to see much action, if any, going forward.
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ACC Football Rx: TV news - Disney gets Fox, ESPN gets AAC (RX; HM)

It's official: Disney Completes 21st Century Fox Acquisition

Disney is scheduled to take possession of 21st Century Fox at 12:02 a.m. ET.

Assets changing hands in the deal include:

Twentieth Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox 2000 Pictures
Fox Family
Fox Animation
Fox’s television creative units
Twentieth Century Fox Television
FX Productions
Fox21
FX Networks
National Geographic Partners
Fox Networks Group International
Star India

Disney also gets Fox’s interests in Hulu, Tata Sky, and Endemol Shine Group.

Disney emphasized that the transaction is designed to help the company increase its international footprint and expand its direct-to-consumer offerings.

Some former Big East conference mates (to some ACC teams) just got a raise...

American Athletic Conference

OT: AAC, ESPN Agree To 12-Year Media-Rights Deal Worth $1B

The American Athletic Conference will get $1B for its media rights from ESPN over 12 years, according to sources. The average of $83.3M per year is about four times what the AAC was making in its previous rights agreement with the net, which paid the league just over $20M annually. The new agreement begins in '20-21 and runs through the '31-32 academic year.

The annual per-school average of $6.94M provides each AAC school with nearly $5M more in annual revenue. They did not sign a grant of rights...

The comprehensive deal provides ESPN with rights to all of the AAC’s live programming, except for a small package of basketball games on CBS and some Navy football games on CBS Sports Network. The new contract also calls for some Saturday football games to be broadcast on ABC. Football, along with men's and women's basketball, will remain on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, but the majority of basketball games and a significant number of the football games will go to ESPN+. Other live sports including baseball, softball and soccer also will air on ESPN+.

I don't think this necessarily means fewer games on ABC/ESPN/2/U, but it probably does mean switching many of the lower-profile games to ESPN+. For example, last year there were 12 AAC football games on ESPN3, 6 games on ESPNews, 18 games on CBSSN, and 2 were only regional broadcasts. All but a few of the CBSSN games could end up on ESPN+, but really, what impact would that have on overall exposure?

ACC Football Rx: Links, news and rumors - 3/20/19 (RX; HM)

FBSchedules points out that Opening point have been spreads set for more than 40 college football games in 2019 by BetOnline.ag and others.

Here are the ACC-related point spreads*:

Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019
Florida (-8.5) vs. Miami

Saturday, Aug. 31, 2019
Florida State (-4.5) vs. Boise State
South Carolina (-7) vs. North Carolina

Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019
Texas A&M at Clemson (-18)

Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019
Notre Dame at Georgia (-11.5)

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019
USC at Notre Dame (-11.5)

Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019
Notre Dame at Michigan (-8.5)

Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019
Miami at Florida State (-1.5)
...

ACC Football Rx: Links, news and rumors - 3/19/19 (RX; HM)

Don't be upset...

Fascinating analysis by Phil Steele on his blog called "Upset Meter". He posits that teams which won a lot of upset victories last season are probably due for a down turn this year, while teams which were the victims of many upsets last year can look forward to more wins in 2019. "How does that apply to ACC football", you ask? Here are the most-impacted ACC teams from last season:

ACC teams set to improve:

Miami Hurricanes, -5 (meaning they lost 5 games there were favored to win and didn't upset anyone)
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, -3
Boston College Eagles, -2

ACC teams destined to slide:

Wake Forest Demon Deacons, +4 (so last year the Deacs won 4 games they were favored to lose)
Pitt Panthers, +3
Syracuse Orange and Clemson Tigers, +2 (although in the Tigers case, one of those was the national championship game!)

From Awful Announcing: ESPN hoping public pressure will force big cable to pick up ACC Network

...DirecTV is already on board to carry it, along with Altice, Hulu, and PlayStation Vue. However, Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network are [not]. ESPN is hoping that pressure from the ACC’s fanbase will force them to cave as the launch date gets closer.

The OP used the phrase "holding out", but how can you call it that if the contract isn't even up for renewal? Still, those providers are key to the early success of the ACCN. Here's a quote from Sports Business Daily:

Disney’s affiliate deals with Comcast, Charter and Dish Network don’t come up before August, which means that they will have to work out a deal in the middle of an existing contract — something that is not the norm but does happen on occasion.
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Other

Axe throwing, classic cars: 11 things to do in CNY this weekend (PS; Hernandez)

Happy first day of spring! This weekend kicks off the official New York State Maple Weekend events as well as the anticipated open of Bad Axe Throwing in Camillus.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen’s classic romance, "Pride and Prejudice" gets a contemporary adaptation for stage by Kate Hamill.
Where: Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse, N.Y. 13210
When: March 20-April 7, show times and special events can be found on the Syracuse Stage website
How much: $20-$56

MG3 featuring Ingrid Jensen

An intimate evening of jazz with MG3, comprised of trombonist and vocalist Melissa Gardiner, Andrew Carroll on the keys, and Byron Cage on drums. This event will mark the release of a new single, Slowly, which features Ingrid Jensen.
Where: The Listening Room at 443, 443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse, N.Y. 13203
When: Friday, March 22 at 6 p.m.
How much: $15

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in concert

Experience all the mystery and fun of the unforgettable adventure of Elliot and E.T. on the big screen, complete with John Williams' Academy Award®-winning score performed live by Symphoria.
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[Hokie Mark]

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[CuseLegacy]

https://www.bizjournals.com/louisvi...n-acc-officials-introduce-soon-to-launch.html



By Erik Spanberg
– Managing Editor, Charlotte Business Journal

Mar 18, 2019, 6:54am EDT

A documentary about Coach K’s early-career struggles as Duke basketball coach. A multi-part series exploring the history of the men’s basketball tournament. And a daily morning show featuring a pair of North Carolina broadcasters whose fathers became synonymous with college basketball in previous decades.
Say hello to ACCN, as in the ACC Network, an ESPN-owned cable channel that goes on air in August. On Friday afternoon at Spectrum Center, hours before the tip-off of the men’s basketball tournament semifinals, the conference commissioner joined ESPN executives, announcers and producers to preview the new channel and some of its first shows. The main draw will be live sports — 1,300 games and events annually — featuring the 15 schools in the Greensboro, N.C.-based conference.
ESPN’s main broadcast campus in Bristol, Conn., will be headquarters for ACCN. Even so, the channel’s signature program, Packer and Durham, will air live for three hours on weekday mornings from a soon-to-be-converted basement in the Charlotte, N.C., home of co-host Mark Packer. Rosalyn Durant, ESPN senior vice president of college networks, whose oversight includes ACCN, told me Friday that other staffers and aspects of the network will run through Charlotte. Durant herself is based in Charlotte.
“It’s marrying two tremendous brands in ESPN and the Atlantic Coast Conference,” John Swofford, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, said Friday.


Conference and network executives disclosed in December, at a news conference in Charlotte before the ACC Football Championship, that ACCN would debut Aug. 22, 2019. And, they said then, Clemson and Georgia Tech would play in the first football game on the network on Aug. 29. Notre Dame at Duke on Nov. 9 is also slated for ACCN, with more football games to be added in the months ahead.
On Friday, ESPN/ACCN senior director of programming and acquisition Stacie McCollum said the first four men’s basketball games to be shown on the network will be consecutive doubleheaders featuring Louisville at Miami and Georgia Tech at N.C. State on Nov. 5 and Notre Dame at North Carolina followed by Virginia at Syracuse on Nov. 6.
“We were really excited to start the season with conference matchups,” she said. “We worked hand in hand with the conference to ensure that we had marquee teams. … Those four games only equate to about 8 hours of programming; I still have a lot of work to do.”
McCollum and her co-workers have 9,000 hours a year to fill with ACC games and related programming.
The impetus for the network is two-fold: promoting the conference to prospective recruits, students and fans; and increasing revenue to keep up with rivals, including the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten.
Big Ten Network, owned by Fox Sports and the conference, started in 2007 and is based in Chicago. SEC Network, like ACCN an ESPN-owned channel, followed in 2014. SEC Network is located in Charlotte as part of ESPN’s 38,000-square-foot offices and studios in Ballantyne. Big Ten and SEC Network each have distribution in the range of 60 million homes, with SEC Network slightly ahead.
Durant declined to estimate how many homes ACCN will be in when it goes on the air, but she said distribution deals and advertising commitments are progressing as anticipated. This week, ESPN disclosed an agreement with DirecTV, an important national distributor.


Revenue from dedicated college conference channels, derived mainly from subscriber fees, helps fuel the arms race of lucrative coaching contracts, training centers and stadiums and arenas in football and men’s basketball. Big Ten schools receive $50 million each from media rights and other shared revenue, including the dedicated network, while the SEC stands at $43 million. In 2016-17, the most recent data available for ACC revenue, each school received less than $30 million.
Swofford did not share internal revenue projections for ACCN, but he did say he’s confident the channel will strengthen the league financially.
The advantages of ESPN’s sprawling media empire to fuel ACCN became apparent Friday. John Dahl, an ESPN Films executive who has played a lead role in the “30 for 30” documentary series, showed previews of “The Class That Saved Coach K,” scheduled to premiere on Aug. 22 on ACCN, and “The Tournament: A History of ACC Basketball.”
Coach K is Mike Krzyzewski, who became head basketball coach at Duke in 1980 but struggled for several years before creating a powerhouse that remains one of the nation’s top programs. Krzyzewski has led Duke to five national titles, and he’s won more games than any other Division I coach.
One of his former players — and a member of the 1982 recruiting class featured in the documentary — is Charlotte resident Jay Bilas, who is also ESPN’s lead college basketball analyst. Bilas is an executive producer of the documentary. Younger fans, Bilas said, will see the history of the ACC through the documentaries. And, referring to basketball fashion in the 1970s and 1980s, he added, “They’ll be really horrified at the shorts.”
The weekday talk show, called “Packer and Durham,” is co-hosted by Mark Packer and Wes Durham. Packer’s father, Billy Packer, played basketball at Wake Forest in the early 1960s and became much better known as a game analyst for Raycom Sports, NBC and CBS. Wes Durham is the son of the late Woody Durham, who was the radio voice of UNC Chapel Hill for 40 years.



Mark Packer and Wes Durham have covered the ACC as broadcasters for most of their careers. Last year, they teamed up for an ACC-themed show on SiriusXM satellite radio, leading to the ACCN version that will start in August. (It will also be simulcast on SiriusXM.)
Packer and Durham said Friday that they are most excited about ESPN’s focus on making the new channel feel familiar and comfortable to ACC fans. And they both emphasized their interest in telling stories about coaches and teams in all sports, not just football and men’s basketball.
So-called Olympic sports, including soccer, volleyball, track, swimming and gymnastics, “will be incredibly important to the network,” said Amy Rosenfeld, ACCN senior coordinating producer.
“We have to best reflect the conference,” she added, describing the network’s approach. Gesturing to Packer and Durham, seated nearby, Rosenfeld said, “How can you be more authentic than these two? All the things that are working in the ACC, we’re going to continue that, amplify it and kind of get out of the way.”


This week, a promotional campaign started for ACCN. It included frequent mentions of the August debut during ESPN’s coverage of the men’s tournament in Charlotte as well as banners and other nods to the conference cable channel throughout the city's uptown area and Spectrum Center.
Swofford, the commissioner, said ACC and school administrators heard an update about ACCN on Wednesday in Charlotte from ESPN President James Pitaro and came away impressed. ESPN has final say on the conference channel’s programming and on-air crew, but Swofford said the ACC is working closely with ESPN to provide ideas and suggestions.

 

[orange79]

So, we're only $250K from the top half of the league. Works for me.

 

[SUskibum]

So, we're only $250K from the top half of the league. Works for me.

And if we increase by only 10%, we’d be top 4.

I’d say that’s pretty good support knowing the school will gradually increase support as results gradually improve (which they’ve already been doing)