sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to Frog Jumping Day!
Frog Jumping Day is dedicated to frogs that jump, to jumping like a frog, to frog jumping contests, and Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," which appears to be the inspiration for the day.
The short story was originally published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," and appeared in The New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. It was Twain's first important work: it went on to appear in more magazines and newspapers and brought him to national attention. It was published as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in The Californian on December 16, 1865—it is under this title that it most frequently appears today. It has also gone by the name "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The story appeared in Twain's first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches, a compilation of 27 short stories that had previously appeared in newspapers and magazines, that was published in 1867.
SU News
https://sujuiceonline.com/2019/05/13/recruiting-roundup-syracuse-offers-stefon-thompson-caleb-burton/ (the juice; Cheng)
Congratulations to the women’s lacrosse team for their win over Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament! On to today’s recruiting links…
Stevie Johnson from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle recently caught up with 2020 tight end Steven Mahar Jr. from Rochester (NY). The Aquinas Institute recently picked up an offer from Syracuse in May, but seemed frustrated that the Orange was late to his recruitment. “At this point I’m considering all of my offers equally, but it impacts a little bit that they were behind some other schools,” he said.
2020 athlete (LB/RB) Stefon Thompson from Charlotte (NC) picked up an offer from Syracuse, he tweeted on Saturday. He’s got a three-star rating from 247 Sports, and holds offers from Colorado State, Liberty and Wisconsin, among others. Syracuse is his first ACC offer.
Desmond Daniels, 2020 linebacker from Fairburn (Ga.) tweeted on Friday evening that he received an offer from Syracuse. UAB, Akron, Illinois and Eastern Kentucky are some of the other schools who have extended offers.
Syracuse also extended an offer to 2022 wide receiver Caleb Burton on Thursday, he tweeted. Though he’s just a freshman, he already has an offer from Arizona State. His father, Charles Burton, played at Syracuse in the late 1990s. Check out the Del Valle (TX) product’s HUDL highlights.
On that same day, Syracuse also offered 2020 wide receiver Kaleb Fauria, he wrote on Twitter. Rated three stars by 247 Sports, he’s a Bishop Feehan (Mass.) native, and his primary recruiter is defensive coordinator Brian Ward. He also holds offers from Boston College, Colorado, Ole’ Miss, Pitt and Iowa, among others.
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Syracuse Football: Dontae Strickland achieves his NFL dream with Arizona Cardinals (itlh.com; Esden Jr)
Former Syracuse football running back Dontae Strickland has made the Arizona Cardinals roster. Here’s how he made it happen under impossible circumstances.
After the 2019 NFL Draft concluded several Syracuse football players immediately signed NFL contracts to join 90-man rosters. Some weren’t so lucky.
Dontae Strickland following the NFL Draft was passed over at least twice by every NFL team. He wasn’t taken in the 2019 NFL Draft and he was passed over for an NFL contract.
So he had no choice but to take a chance with the Arizona Cardinals on an unsalaried tryout at the rookie NFL minicamp. You have only a few days to try and impress an NFL team with minimal opportunities.
Despite the long odds, Dontae Strickland announced on Instagram that it all paid off:
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Syracuse Football: Athlon Sports disrespects the Orange in latest ranking (itlh; Esden Jr)
Athlon Sports doesn’t think very highly of the Syracuse football program. Here’s what they had to say and why they couldn’t be further from the truth.
When a recruit comes to see the Syracuse football program a lot of things are immediately discussed:
SU has a great history of winning, Hall of Famers, and tradition.
The academics are top notch (ICYMI Syracuse broke historic records with their student-athletes here).
Playing time won’t be given, it has to be earned.
Since the turn of the 21st century, Syracuse has had five different head coaches. Things seem to finally be stabilizing with Dino Babers at the helm after a 10-3 season in 2018.
Although that wasn’t enough for the folks over at Athlon Sports when you look at Syracuse’s landing spot. They ranked every coaching job in the country from No. 1 to No. 130 based on several factors:
The attractiveness of the position from a coaching perspective
Tradition.
Facilities.
Location.
Money.
Ability to recruit talent.
Syracuse is the 58th best job in country:
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Syracuse Football: Ranking best SU coach at producing NFL talent (itlh; Esden Jr)
Who is the best Syracuse football coach at producing NFL talent? We decided to break down the facts and let you decide. Here’s what we discovered.
As we wait for the Syracuse football season to get here, we received a request from one of our loyal readers (Duncan MacAndrew): who is the best Syracuse football coach at producing NFL talent?
We decided to do a deep dive and find out for ourselves. For this exercise, we grabbed the resumes of the last three Syracuse head coaches. In our research, we cross-referenced these coaches to the years they coached to the players that were selected in the following year’s NFL Draft.
Not only did we compare the Syracuse results, but we also gathered any players they got to the NFL in any of their prior collegiate head coaching stints.
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Florida State football finishes last in APR among Power Five schools (usatoday.com; McGahee III)
Florida State's football APR (Academic Progress Rate) took another dive for the 2017-18 academic year according to the NCAA's latest report.
FSU's multi-year APR dropped from 941 to 936 -- out of 1,000 -- after posting a single-year APR of 922 for 2017-18. That leaves the Seminoles just six points away from not being eligible to participate in championships according to NCAA rules.
Here is how the NCAA calculates the APR.
"Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible.
"A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate."
In order to remain eligible to compete in championships a program must have an multi-year APR rating over 930 over a four-year span.
The penalties for dropping below 930 gradually increase per the NCAA.org website.
"The first penalty level limits teams to 16 hours of practice per week over five days (as opposed to 20 over six days), with the lost four hours to be replaced with academic activities.
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Clemson Football: Will Putnam can develop into All-ACC caliber player (rubbingtherock.com; Spencer)
for gbo
Clemson football freshman Will Putnam has the potential to develop into an All-ACC caliber player before his Tiger career comes to a close.
Will Putnam was the highest-rated offensive lineman to sign in the 2019 Clemson football recruiting class.
The Tigers were in need of a few talented offensive linemen to fill the depth chart and begin to increase scholarship numbers as several of the current offensive linemen are coming into their senior or junior seasons.
Throughout the course of the next few months, we will be taking a look at each freshman entering the Clemson football program in 2019.
Today, we continue our analysis by looking at 4-star OL Will Putnam.
Talent Analysis:
The major knock on Putnam is his arm length. His arms are a bit shorter than what a typical NFL-caliber offensive lineman possesses, but that isn’t as big of an issue for an offensive guard.
Putnam measures in at 6-foot-4 and 285 pounds.
He has great power and can be a force in the interior part of that offensive line. Putnam will need to put on a little more weight to play inside, most likely getting to around 300-plus pounds.
Putnam has the potential to be a really good interior offensive lineman for the Tigers before it’s all said and done. As a matter of fact, he reminds me a little bit of a John Simpson, but perhaps with a bit better footwork and a little more readiness to play immediately.
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Links, news and rumors - 5/13/19 (RX; HM)
From ACCNation: Football Bowls – Is More Bad?
(Hint: No, duh!)
ACC Games
Overall, in 2020 there will be 43 bowl games. There are 130 FBS teams eligible so approximately 65% are looking at a post season game. The ACC and SEC each have 11 bowl tie-ins.
What are some of the other changes you can expect for ACC bowl games in the future? The Belk Bowl will now rotate a team from the SEC and Big Ten to compete against the ACC. The Gator Bowl will continue to feature an ACC and SEC team. The ACC will become the backup conference for the Outback Bowl that pits the SEC against the Big Ten. Should the Big Ten team be in the Orange Bowl a team from the ACC will step up...
The author also reports the payout for some recent ACC bowls:
FIRST TIER
Camping World Bowl $2.275M
Belk Bowl $1.7M
Sun Bowl $2.15M
Pinstripe $2.0M
SECOND TIER
Military Bowl $1.0M
Quick Lane $1.2M
We are expecting to get an update on ACC bowl tie-ins this week, so stay tuned!
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Avg TV Viewers 2018 season (RX; HM)
Sports Media Watch logo
I finally found a little more time to analyze the mounds of TV viewership data provided by Sports Media Watch. I wanted to get some idea of the relative value of Tier 1 games and lower-tier games, by conference. To estimate that, I split out all games by conference (giving each team in each game full credit for the number of viewers, even though we know that's not reality), then I came up with 3 sets of numbers: (1) average #viewers, all games, (2) average #viewer, top 40 games** only, and (3) the average of the remaining games.
Conf. Avg. Viewers Top 40 Avg. the rest
SEC 4,041,264 7,415,875 1,996,045
B1G 3,185,009 5,983,775 1,585,714
XII 2,375,822 4,641,675 890,016
ACC 2,190,547 4,385,775 860,106
PAC 2,006,822 3,363,350 921,600
Based on this analysis, we see that SEC football is the most valuable brand for that sport*, following by Big Ten football. For the 2018 season at least, the Big XII beat out the ACC for 3rd place, and the Pac-12 brought up the rear. If you examine the games outside the top 40 (aka "the rest"), the ACC was in 5th place last season (and the Pac-12 was 3rd in that category).
* note: this isn't meant to address the total value of the TV rights, which includes men's basketball in particular (along with other sports), but it does show the relative value of football - at least for the one season, 2018-19.
** The reason I chose 40 games for tier 1 is because I figure 3 games per week X 13 weeks = 39 games, plus the CCG = 40.
__________
BOTTOM LINE: The ACC can't afford to have a bunch of years in a row like 2018 - it was not a good year for ACC football at all. Of course, it hasn't been that long since the stellar 2016 season, so I don't think 2018 is a complete disaster - as long as the league doesn't make a habit of it!
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Links - David Hale edition (RX; HM)
Links - David Hale edition
buried treasure
Guys, I accidentally stumbled upon a hidden treasure this weekend... David Hale - the ESPN journalist who covers the ACC - has his own blog! Who knew? Anyway, Friday he posted a nice article called "Your recruiting success is already decided". In it, he points out how not much has changed over the last decade or so. Clemson, FSU and Miami were on top then, and they still are. Virginia Tech and UNC were in the second tier then, and they still are, etc. A good read.
But why stop there? Here are 5 more nuggets from Hale's treasure chest...
Syracuse’s luck could shift in 2019
Orange football improved from 4-8 in 2017 to 10-3 in 2018. They also went from -12 to +13 in turnover margin... but turnovers are mostly random events which tend to balance out over time. Will the 'Cuse return to the middle of the bell curve in 2019? Hales says it's likely they will - and with that, so will the win total.
Duke’s DBs should see more INTs in 2019
In a similar vein, the Blue Devils were on the short end of the turnover stick - particularly when it comes to interceptions. Hale thinks that could bode well for Duke football in 2019.
The sky isn't falling at Virginia Tech
Fuente was brought in to fix the Hokies' offense. Mission accomplished (even last year, the offense was pretty good). 2018 was a perfect storm of early NFL departures, transfers, suspensions and plain old injuries on defense. Can Bud Foster right the ship in 2019? Hale thinks so.
Mack Didn't Come Back to a Train Wreck
Hale says UNC's average margin of defeat was too close for a 2-9 team -- with better coaching, the Heels should've won 5 to 7 games (and he thinks there's a good chance they will)
The Goal for FSU's O-line in 2019: Slightly Less Awfulness
Hale thinks the Noles' OL will improve, but still be below average - he says that's too much improvement to ask for in one off-season.
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Other
For over 50 years, the people of Syracuse get a weather forecast by looking at the city’s skyline. Video by Christa Lemczak | clemczak@syracuse.com
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