sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to Nobel Prize Day!
Nobel Prize Day is observed annually on December 10.
On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his third and last will at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris. When it was opened and read after his death, the will caused a lot of controversy both in Sweden and internationally, as Nobel had left much of his wealth for the establishment of a prize. His family opposed the creation of the Nobel Prize, and the prize awarders he named refused to do what he had requested in his will. It was five years before the first Nobel Prize could be awarded in 1901.
Where does the money for the Nobel Prizes come from?
At the age of 17, Swedish Alfred Nobel spoke five languages fluently. Nobel became an inventor and businessman, and at the time of his death on 10 December 1896, he had 355 patents worldwide – one of them was the patent on dynamite. Furthermore, he had started 87 companies all over the world. According to his will, Alfred Nobel’s enormous fortune was to be used to establish prizes to award those who had done their best to benefit humankind in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel’s death. In 1969, another prize was added “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.”
SU News
College football: Disappointed Syracuse has work to do (D&C; Johnson)
Coach Dino Babers doesn’t have just decisions to make, he has situations to fix after a 5-7 finish to the 2019 season
By ending the season with a 39-30 upset over Wake Forest, Syracuse was able to end its football season on a positive note.
Despite all of the disappointments — such as the blowout loss to a 3-9 Maryland team or the beatdown from Boston College (which just fired its coach) — the 5-7 record the Orange finished with is the program’s second best since 2013.
That should tell you all you need to know about the state of the program the latter half of this decade. So even though Syracuse fell from 10 wins to 5, coach Dino Babers can still sell signs of progress.
Whether or not supporters believe in that will largely depend on offseason moves Babers will have to consider.
This is a very important time for Syracuse. No one in the conference is about to catch Clemson, who could have an all-time recruiting class, but moving up the pecking order in the Atlantic Division is still possible.
However, if Florida State and BC both land solid hires, think James Franklin or Mike Norvell for the Seminoles, then Syracuse’s path back from the cellar to the top will only become more difficult.
Here are four questions for Syracuse in the offseason:
Who will be the next defensive coordinator?
Babers made the tough decision to let Brian Ward go after the defense allowed the most rushing yards in school history to Boston College. The Orange defense was opportunistic during the 10-win 2018 campaign as it racked up sacks, turnovers and was solid on third down.
However, this year the unit greatly underachieved despite returning talented playmakers like Andre Cisco, Alton Robinson and Kendall Coleman. Coleman and Robinson will be gone, but Cisco, Trill Williams and Ifeatu Melifonwu should be back. In other words, the next defensive coordinator will have talent at his disposal, especially in the secondary.
Interim coordinator Steve Stanard had a solid showing against Duke, but if he’s the next choice then it probably means Babers was turned down by his top candidates. NunesMagician — the SB Nation Syracuse team site — suggested Navy’s Nate Mink, Buffalo’s Brian Borland or UAB’s David Reeves could be potential targets.
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SU football hands out team awards: Coleman wins MVP (PS; Mink)
Senior defensive end Kendall Coleman took home two in-house team awards, including Most Valuable Player, during Syracuse football’s end-of-season banquet Sunday night at Drumlins.
Fourteen team awards were handed out during the Syracuse Football Senior Recognition and Honors Banquet. Thirteen players were honored during the two-hour event.
Nolan Cooney was recognized with the Jim DaRin Award for Courage. Cooney, the team’s holder, was diagnosed with testicular cancer as a high school junior in 2013. He underwent surgery and nine weeks of chemotherapy before rejoining his high school basketball team ahead of its Division III semifinal playoff game.
Junior tight end Aaron Hackett and fifth-year senior defensive lineman Brandon Berry were honored as the most improved players on the team. Hackett is set to return in 2020 after catching 23 passes for 205 yards and six touchdowns.
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Orange Watch: A wish list of future ACC scheduling for Syracuse football - The Juice Online (the juice; Bierman)
Good except no Louisville as a rival for Syracuse. This means zero sense. UL is the worst school in the ACC to as a rival for Syracuse
Item: As we put on bow on the 2019 ACC football regular season, it was an up-and-down campaign for Syracuse that fell tantalizingly one win short (N.C. State/Pitt) of the Orange making back-to-back bowl game appearances for the first time since 2012-13, joining only division-mate N.C. State and Duke and Georgia Tech among conference teams sitting home this month. Sure, SU will have ended up playing all three of those schools by the end of next season when Georgia Tech is the home crossover opponent in 2020 following this year’s crossover game at Duke, and annual meeting with the Wolfpack. But moving into the next decade, and before the inevitable expansion of the College Football Playoff, it’s time to change the rules for the lucrative conference championship games, and open up the ACC to a new scheduling format so teams meet more frequently.
The current obstacle to Syracuse football only having two scheduled ACC games apiece against the likes of old Big East rivals Miami and Virginia Tech in the first decade-plus of its affiliation, is a 2016 NCAA rules modification which was designed to help the 10-team Big 12, and the fact that ACC football is 14 teams strong.
The standing NCAA rule stated: “FBS conferences must have at least 12 members, and championship games must be between the winners of two divisions within the conference. Each division must play a round-robin schedule during the regular season in order to hold a championship game.”
But the modification in 2016 for the Big 12 with less than the minimum 12 member schools allowed for: “Conferences with fewer than 12 members to hold championship games as long as they meet one of two conditions: Either play their championship game between division winners after round-robin competition in each division or between the top two teams in the conference standings following full round-robin, regular-season competition between all members of the conference.
The ACC is stuck in between the two rules so we have the Atlantic and the Coastal conundrum in which Clemson (and previously Florida State) dominates one side, and each team has won the division on the other side over the last seven seasons, or since the ‘Cuse joined the league in 2013.
The imbalance also creates so few games against old rivals the Hurricanes and Hokies, for example, not to mention new ones developing against the likes of Virginia and Duke, barely making it feel as though they are even conference brethren.
The solution is to change the rules so that a new scheduling format allows for each ACC team to play one another over a three-year period in one 14-team division, with the top two teams in the standings meeting in the conference championship game as in the 2016 modification. In other words, why can’t 10 expand to 14, even with each team not playing one another in the same season, but over two seasons.
The format would have each team always playing three annual “rivals.” In the case for Syracuse it’s B.C., Louisville and Pitt that make the most sense geographically and/or from Big East days. The other five conference games would rotate each year.
Below is simply an example (SU would have to play at Duke two straight times) of how the format could work using the current crossover opponents over the next two seasons, but there could be flexibility in how those eventual five-team pairings are constructed.
2020
Boston College-A
Louisville-H
Pittsburgh-A
Clemson-A
Florida State-H
Georgia Tech-H
N.C. State-H
Wake Forest-A
2021
Boston College-H
Louisville-A
Pittsburgh-H
Duke-A
Miami-H
North Carolina-A
Virginia-H
Virginia Tech-A
Flipping the home/away locations with the five-team pairings in 2022 and 2023 would ensure that every four seasons there would be home/away games for the Orange program against every ACC rival.
That’s a truer sense of a conference, even with a robust 14 schools.
Outline - Read & annotate without distractions (theathletic.com; Gutierrez; pay service)
Rob Long enters a room on the second floor of Philadelphia’s Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience, and his mind begins to race. He sits on a stool next to his wife, Irie. Nobody says much. Anxiety fills the air. Once his blood pressure is checked, he remains quiet. A few minutes pass before the doctor walks in to reveal the results of his latest MRI. Long leans over and glances toward the floor. He is tense, so Irie rubs the back of his neck.
“My heart drops into my stomach the second he walks into the room,” Long will say later, and now he must confront the moment he fears most.
The doctor shakes their hands. “It looks OK, but let’s check,” he says as he pulls up scans of Long’s brain on a computer screen. Five feet away, Long braces himself. Stress continues to mount. Fifteen or 20 seconds pass. Then the doctor says, without expression, the results are good and Long is fine.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Long says. There’s...
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Syracuse Football: Orange have successfully recruited another No. 1 WR (itlh; Esden Jr)
Syracuse football now has a new No. 1 wide receiver to build around for the present and the future. Here are all the details and what it means.
With early national signing day rapidly approaching, the Syracuse football team is putting the final touches on its 2020 recruiting class.
Over the weekend they found a piece to the puzzle that’s been missing for a while: a true No. 1 wide receiver.
3-star wide receiver prospect Damien Alford committed to the Orange during an official recruiting visit. The news was first announced on Sunday via Mike Tunsil.
Syracuse may have a No. 1 wide receiver in Trishton Jackson, but they now have another different kind of weapon they didn’t have previously.
Alford stands in at 6-foot-5, 210 pounds.
Per the Syracuse roster sheet, there isn’t a player that stands over 6-foot-3 and the only two that are even that tall (Ed Hendrix, Cameron Jordan) didn’t have a significant role on the team due to injury or playing time in 2019.
Damien became the 16th member of the 2020 class and the first wide receiver to join the squad.
Syracuse lacked that big body this season. It hurt them in the red zone, in the middle of the field as a mismatch nightmare, and at the very least as a decoy to open things up for the rest of the offense.
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ACC Football: Clemson’s blowout title game win a bad look for league (chopchat.com; Parker)
The ACC football title is staying in the state of South Carolina for a fifth straight season – but this win was much worse for the conference than others.
When the final seconds ticked off the clock in Saturday’s ACC football title game with the Clemson Tigers taking on the Virginia Cavaliers, it was clear that the four time conference champs would add a fifth title to their resume – well, actually that was made clear shortly after kickoff when the Tigers scored without a real challenge.
In actuality, there was no one in the country – except for maybe a few diehard fans of the Wahoos who just didn’t want to accept reality – who thought that the Coastal Division champs had a legit shot of breaking the Tigers’ current streak of winning the league.
At the same point, there is almost no one in the ACC football world who thought that Clemson was going to go out there and destroy Virginia to the tune of a 62-17 final score – by far the biggest margin of victory for Clemson over the five game span in which the Tigers set a record for most consecutive title game wins.
Let me just say this since Clemson fans get really angry when you think that they are being talked smack about – the Tigers did nothing wrong. They did everything they were supposed to: arrive safely in Charlotte, wake up in the morning, don’t get food poisoning and arrive to Bank of America Stadium in one piece.
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https://www.thestate.com/sports/college/acc/clemson-university/article237966074.html (thestate.com; Connolly)
for gbo
New South Florida head coach Jeff Scott will finish his duties with Clemson this season before moving on from the Tigers program, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney announced in a statement Monday night.
Scott, who served as Clemson’s receivers coach and co-offensive coordinator, was named the USF head coach Monday afternoon.
“Jeff will be serving as the head coach at USF for the next week before rejoining us the latter part of next week and remaining with us for the duration of our College Football Playoff run,” Swinney said. “Our team is excited that he’ll have the opportunity to finish our 2019 season with us.”
Scott served as Clemson’s receivers coach and recruiting coordinator from 2008-14 before being promoted to co-offensive coordinator alongside Tony Elliott when Chad Morris left for SMU.
Scott helped recruit and develop one of the best groups of receivers in the country during his time at Clemson as the Tigers have several players currently playing in the NFL, including DeAndre Hopkins, Sammy Watkins and Adam Humphries.
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ACC Network analyst says Scott's departure won't hamper Clemson recruiting (greenvilleonline.com; Keepfer)
for gbo
With longtime assistant Jeff Scott named as the next head coach at South Florida on Monday, the Clemson football program is losing a proven offensive football mind and an outstanding recruiter.
Scott has been recognized as among the nation’s top recruiters on numerous occasions during his 12 years at Clemson and recently was listed among the finalists for a second consecutive year for the Broyles Award, which is presented annually to the nation’s top assistant coach.
“When you lose a great recruiter like Jeff Scott it’s going to have some impact, but Clemson’s recruiting is a machine right now,” said ACC Network analyst Eric Mac Lain said, who like Scott is a former player at Clemson. “It’s bigger than one person and there’s a next-man-up mentality.”
Scott, who grew up crisscrossing the state of Florida with his father Brad, when Brad was an assistant coach at Florida State, has been one of Clemson’s top recruiters in recent years and served as the program’s recruiting coordinator from 2009 to 2014.
He was the lead recruiter for several standout players, including wide receivers such as Artavis Scott and Charone Peake as well as current Tigers Justyn Ross, Tee Higgins, Amari Rodgers, Frank Ladson Jr., T.J. Chase and Derion Kendrick.
During Scott’s time at Clemson, eight of the Tigers’ 12 recruiting classes were ranked among the Top 10 nationally by ESPN and the 2020 class is currently rated No. 1 in the country, which would be a first in program history.
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Virginia Tech Hokies: Post Season Personnel Changes (gobblercountry.com; Fahvaag)
for Hokie Mark
Usually the strange and extraordinary program related things happen after the bowl game. When the team has a winning season, and the football world thinks there only need to be a few tweaks, things just don’t move much.
Any team who was really concerned about winning their bowl game will tend to guard the staff and keep things intact until January. Well no one told Justin Fuente. The Hokies seem to have discovered a loophole in the standard operating procedure. So at the end of the day, December 9, 2019. The defensive coaching staff was tossed into a blender and some pieces lost.
If anyone had told us before the end of the season that this much mayhem would happen this early, no one including Yours Truly would have believed it. It seems that the broom came out and started sweeping and straightening a month early.
So, what changes were made, and does anyone have a clue as to where things will end up on December 26th and the final preparations for the bowl trip to Charlotte?
- Bud retires after the Belk Bowl. We know that, but he’s not leaving he’s just moving upstairs to some sort of managerial role for Whit Babcock. There is something that tells me that he won’t be too far away from the football action. He’ll be needed.
- It looks like the Defensive Coordinator position that was a near cinch lock in for Barry Odom evaporated into a cold winter Memphis sky. There didn’t seem to be any real backup position so the Hokies promoted Justin Hamilton to DC. There will be a whole lot written and even more thoughts left unsaid about the decision, that’s for sure. I’d be willing to bet a lunch that the Odom HC hire at Memphis was accompanied by sailor-like levels of expletives in the Tech AD’s office. Hey! Who knows? The Hamilton promotion might be tonic and turn into another pulse of young and able Bud Foster. That remains to be seen. The players and his teammates all seem to love it.
- There were two coaching losses that came with mixed opinions as well. Brian Mitchell and Zahn Burden were not given contracts for the year. You could call that, fired, yes. But both will land on their feet, somewhere. The Mitchell drop is the most inscrutable move. He was responsible for the resurgence of the defensive backfield, and was responsible for the serious improvement of both Caleb Farley and Jermaine Waller. There hasn’t been a replacement named, yet. The running back coaching responsibilities are being handed to Adam Lechtenberg who was already the Assistant Head Coach/Executive Director, Player Development. This move seems to have underwhelmed the sports world at a lower level than the Hamilton promotion.
- The weirdest and least liked of the coaching terminations was that of defensive line coach Charley Wiles. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to the move other than Charley was the last coaching connection to the Beamer coaching staff. He was good at handling the defensive line, and a solid recruiter at that position. He worked some serious miracles with undersized players for a generation. They hurry to get rid of him before the Belk Bowl doesn’t make much sense. Allowing him to walk out on his own two feet would have been a classier move and the team would have lost nothing for allowing him to coach one more game with his friend Bud. Sometimes school in summertime seems to infect the best of programs.
Final ACC power rankings for 2019 season (247sports.com; Crawford)
Heading into bowl season, let's review ACC's final power rankings from 2019 worst to first:
14. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (3-9): There were a few bright spots during Geoff Collins' first season in Atlanta, but mostly losses from a team undergoing a philosophical switch that doesn't know how to win just yet. Georgia Tech's lost to The Citadel at home was a low point, but the Yellow Jackets rebounded to beat Miami on the road a month later. Georgia Tech has a long way to go.
13. N.C. State Wolfpack (4-8): After suffering heavy draft losses at several skill positions including quarterback, you could assume some growing pains for the Wolfpack this season. But even coach Dave Doeren would tell he didn't see eight losses coming, especially after a 3-1 start. The wheels came off at N.C. State after a Thursday night win over Syracuse as the defense laid down and the Wolfpack ended the season on a six-game skid.
12. Duke Blue Devils (5-7): We've come to expect David Cutcliffe exceeding expectations, but not this year. The season started out sour vs. Alabama, but the Blue Devils got to 4-2 before flatlining. Duke snapped a five-game losing streak losing streak in the finale vs. Miami to send its senior class out on a high note.
11. Syracuse Orange (5-7): This season was a colossal disappointment for the Orange, who were ranked inside the Top 25 in September and were picked by many to challenge Clemson in the ACC Atlantic. Quarterback struggles persisted throughout and the vaunted pass rush never got on schedule. Considered one of the nation's fastest-rising coaches coming into the season, Dino Babers' stock plummeted in 2019.
10. Miami Hurricanes (6-6): Bowl eligibility for the Canes. But let's face it — that's not why Manny Diaz was hired, not with this roster. Miami should've challenged for nine wins in Diaz's first season, one that started off rocky with consecutive losses and ended even worse after setbacks to FIU and Duke. Throw in a head-scratching loss to nine-loss Georgia Tech and Miami simply was not a good football team this season.
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Links, news and rumors - 12/10/19 (RX; HM)
Links, news and rumors - 12/10/19
CFP Point Spreads from SportsBetting.ag:
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2019 Bowl Watchability (BannerSociety) (RX; HM)
2019 Bowl Watchability (BannerSociety)
Here are some highlights from BannerSociety's...
The giant 2019-20 BOWL WATCHABILITY RANKING
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Other
New Five Guys in Clay now open (PS; Tampone)
The Five Guys location in Clay opened for business today.
The location is the third in the Syracuse area for the burger chain after restaurants in DeWitt and Camillus. The eatery is located at the new North End Commons shopping plaza on Route 31, near the Clay Lowe's.
Other tenants at the plaza include Starbucks, the area’s second Texas Roadhouse restaurant and WellNow Urgent Care. Next door to Five Guys, an America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses location is set to open.
News of Five Guys’ arrival in Clay first broke over the summer.
