sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
- Messages
- 25,283
- Like
- 109,229
World Elephant Day asks everyone to "help conserve and protect elephants from the numerous threats they face" and "to experience elephants in non-exploitive and sustainable environments where elephants can thrive under care and protection." It is a day to express concern, share knowledge, and support solutions for the better care of captive and wild elephants; it is a day to honor elephants, spread awareness about the critical threats they face, and to support solutions to help ensure their survival. It brings "attention to the urgent plight of Asian and African elephants" and is "a vehicle by which organizations can rally together to give voice to the issues threatening elephants."
The day was thought up in 2011 by Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Michael Clark, and by the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation, specifically by Sivaporn Dardarananda, the Foundation's Secretary-General. It was founded on August 12, 2012, by Patricia Sims and the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation, and first observed on that day. The Foundation is a non-profit that was started in 2002 as a Royal Initiative of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit of Thailand, and has the mission of acquiring captive elephants and reintroducing them to live as wild elephants in protected forest habitats. The day was created in part to celebrate the work of the Foundation. On the first World Elephant Day, Patricia Sims and Michael Clark released Return to the Forest, a documentary which focuses on the work of the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation.
SU News
Camp Notes: Tommy DeVito, Chris Elmore detail decision to not opt out (DO; Hillman)
The media won’t have access to Syracuse’s training camp practices this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the football team is organizing regular Zoom interviews with head coach Dino Babers and select players while also providing film from the Ensley Athletic Center. With “Camp Notes,” The Daily Orange’s beat reporters bring the latest news, observations and analysis as the Orange gear up for an unprecedented 2020 season. Follow along here and on Twitter.
Only a few months before the season, Chris Elmore was undecided about playing for Syracuse in 2020.
The risks were obvious: the long-term effects of COVID-19 are unknown. Elmore could play, but he might become severely ill. He could opt out, but he wouldn’t have the opportunity for a strong season that reaches the radars of NFL scouts.
“I was just like, ‘ah, is this something I really want to go through, especially my last year?’” Elmore, a senior defensive lineman and tight end, said during a virtual press conference Aug 11. “Just talking it over with my family, we’re all for it until I can’t play no more.”
“(My decision) was really just thinking about what would I do. I would be going home. Right now, going home really isn’t an option for me.”
For quarterback Tommy DeVito, the decision to play this season wasn’t as complicated. Despite an ESPN report that multiple Big Ten players who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 are now experiencing myocarditis — a rare heart condition — the redshirt junior confirmed that he’s “here to play,” and that nothing would change his mind.
DeVito said Monday in a statement on Twitter that the Orange are “ready for whatever comes next” — whether that be a full season, postponement to the spring or cancellation entirely. He’s spoken with other players in the Atlantic Coast Conference, asking about their protocols and how their coaches were approaching practices, he said Tuesday.
“Talking to coaches, teammates, family and friends, I felt like I wanted to post something,” DeVito said. “I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, so I took a couple days and got my thoughts together. I don’t want to say I (do or don’t) want to play because there’s guys on the team that do and don’t.”
Defensive lineman Cooper Dawson has already decided to sit out the 2020 season, and head coach Dino Babers said Aug. 6 that other players are contemplating whether to opt-out. Elmore and DeVito have fully committed to playing in the upcoming season.
Other players, even those who don’t plan to opt out, hold similar concerns. The team’s leadership council — which DeVito is a member of — presented Babers with a list of topics before the first day of training camp on Aug. 6. Players didn’t practice that day, instead holding team meetings, some of which included Director of Athletics John Wildhack.
...
Camp Notes: With season in doubt, Babers insists SU prepares to play (DO; Dabbundo)
When Dino Babers was last made available to the media Thursday, he was optimistic that there would still be a college football season this fall. The Power 5 conferences released updated season schedules that largely included conference-only games, and the Orange prepared to open with their first training camp practice that afternoon.
Babers’ optimism hasn’t changed in the four days since. But the situation has.
Both within SU’s program and at a national level, the prospects of a college football season this fall appear to be dwindling, even while players around the country are uniting together under the #WeWantToPlay hashtag. Despite players’ statements on Twitter in support of a season, the Big Ten is reportedly on the verge of canceling its season, according to the Detroit Free Press.
#WeWantToPlay
Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence issued a statement Monday on Twitter expressing support for a season this fall, using the #WeWantToPlay hasthag. Babers didn’t comment directly on Lawrence’s statement but said he had read it. He didn’t know if his players were directly involved in the #WeWantToPlay movement, but he said his players had been talking with athletes from other schools.
A council of players representing the Syracuse football team presented Babers with a list of concerns shortly after the head coach’s press conference Thursday, Syracuse.com reported. Instead of participating in the first day of practice, the players sat out and held team meetings, some of which included Director of Athletics John Wildhack. Babers called the discussions “Kumbaya meetings.”
Testing was one of the players’ listed concerns. The athletes wanted to be tested twice a week and to see their Atlantic Coast Conference opponents and nonconference opponent Liberty following the same protocols to ensure their safety.
“It’s because they’ve been asking questions that are way up the ladder that we’re still waiting for the answers for,” Babers said. “When it gets down to their level, and they’re talking to their moms and dads and everyone else, then it’s frustrating. Like it feels like they’re being kept out of the loop, when really the loop is not completed yet.”
...
Syracuse QB Tommy DeVito stands with rest of college football players: 'I'm here to play' (cnycentral.com; Hauswirth)
College football players have voiced their opinions more so than ever before in recent days, announcing their desire to have a season in 2020.
Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence was among the first in college football to use his platform to push for a college football season this fall, as power five conference leaders mull concerns over playing during a global pandemic.
The Big Ten Conference may be the first domino to fall, as league leaders met Tuesday to further discuss the possibility of postponing the season to perhaps the spring.
The Big Ten is scheduled to hold a vote Tuesday as well, deciding on whether to have a season in the fall or not.
Meanwhile, the ACC has indicated thus far that it plans on having a season regardless of what the other leagues do.
Syracuse Orange head coach Dino Babers spoke with the media on Monday, explaining that his team will continue to practice until they're told otherwise.
Orange players addressed reporters Tuesday as well, including redshirt-junior quarterback Tommy DeVito.
...
How Syracuse landed a commitment from Duce Chestnut, its top recruit in a decade (theathletic.com; $; Gutierrez)
Last week, Darian “Duce” Chestnut broke out his orange and blue Syracuse gloves. He walked by a trailer next to his high school football field. A few teammates chuckled. “That’s official, bro,” one said. “Don’t be thinking you’re all big time just because you committed to Syracuse,” said another. Chestnut swears he wasn’t showing off his new school. He was honoring a pledge he had made to Andre Cisco, the Orange’s All-America safety.
On his visit to Syracuse last fall, Cisco gave Chestnut a pair of his gloves, with his No. 7 printed near the wrist. “Be the hardest worker here if you commit,” Chestnut recalls Cisco telling him. “Believe in the coaches’ vision. It will come true if you believe it.”
Looking at the exchange now, it represented the transfer in dreams from one elite SU defensive player to potentially the next. Cisco, a junior safety, exploded on the scene as a freshman and projects as a 2021 NFL Draft selection. Chestnut wants to be next in line, the backbone to the Orange’s 3-3-5 formation and at the center of SU’s rebuilding attempts. Chestnut, 17, hasn’t stepped foot in the Carrier Dome, but he wants to lead a defense that makes the place rock. He envisions a defense that is relentless, where he is deflecting passes, racking up interceptions and helping the Orange return to its winning ways of the late ’90s.
...
Syracuse Football: Fans of the Orange are feeling the excitement as Syracuse enters their fifth season under Dino Babers. The team once again returns a lot of talent on offense with Tommy DeVito at quarterback and having a backfield tandem of Abdul Adams and Jarveon Howard. Syracuse has the skill to compete with anyone in the conference. Check out some of the top reasons why Orange fans are excited about the 2020 season.
College football: Syracuse’s ACC season still on — for now (nny360.com; St Croix)
The prospects of a Syracuse University football season survived another day amid chaos in the college football landscape.
The Atlantic Coast Conference released a statement Tuesday evening to reiterate its intentions to move forward with plans for a fall football season mere hours after the Big 10 and Pac-12 conferences announced plans to cancel fall sports and aim for spring football due to COVID-19 concerns.
The Orange started preseason training camp Saturday and is still scheduled to begin its fifth season under coach Dino Babers on Sept. 12 at ACC foe North Carolina. The SEC and Big 12 had also maintained plans for a fall football season as of Tuesday night.
“The ACC will continue to make decisions based on medical advice, inclusive of our Medical Advisory Group, local and state health guidelines, and do so in a way that appropriately coincides with our universities’ academic missions,” read the statement sent from the conference communications department to media on behalf of the ACC.
“The safety of our students, staff and overall campus communities will always be our top priority, and we are pleased with the protocols being administrated on our 15 campuses. We will continue to follow our process that has been in place for months and has served us well. We understand the need to stay flexible and be prepared to adjust as medical information and the landscape evolves.”
...
https://cusecommunity.syr.edu/s/163...312&ecid=11312&crid=0&calpgid=430&calcid=1194 (cusecomminity.com)
The Syracuse University Alumni Club of South Florida is pleased to invite you to our Aug. 20 Zoom program with Antwon Bailey ’11 and Tony “Red” Bruin ’86 as they share their experience on how college athletics shaped their future. Bruin played forward on the Syracuse basketball team from 1979-1983. A third-team All-Big East selection during the 1981-82 season, Bruin was drafted by the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. He currently works in the Jasper County School District in Bluffton, S.C. Bailey was a running back on the Syracuse football team from 2008-2011. After rushing for 1,051 yards and earning first-team All-Big East honors his senior season, Bailey earned an invitation to training camp for the NFL’s Washington Football Team. He currently teaches math and is the running backs coach at St. John’s College High School in Baltimore, MD. We’re looking to connecting (virtually) with you during our program!
Thursday, August 20, 2020
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Is it Safe to Play FB? (RX; HM)
Is it Safe to Play FB?
From SBJ Daily - Top ACC Medical Advisor Says Football Can Be Played Safely:
also from the article...
...
ACC Medical Advisor Explains Decision To Keep Pressing Forward (SI; Driskell)
From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak there have been mixed messages coming from medical professionals at every level, which has made it extremely difficult to know, or trust, what steps we need to take.
In March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, advised against healthy people wearing masks.
"The masks are important for someone who’s infected to prevent them from infecting someone else,” Fauci said at the time. “Right now in the United State, people should not be walking around with masks. There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”
Just days prior to Fauci’s interview with CBS, Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, the United States Surgeon General, tweeted that masks were not effective in preventing the general public from catching COVID-19.
Fast forward to August and that message has completely changed, to the point where masks are mandated if you are out in public in some municipalities. Hundreds of doctors advise use of a medicine that is decades old to battle the virus, while other parts of society push back against it and call it dangerous.
...
Can college football teams actually switch conferences to play in 2020 with their leagues shut down? (cbssports.com; Dodd)
One of the sidebars coming out of college football's cancellation-palooza on Tuesday is the possibility of conference realignment -- if only temporarily for one season. More specifically, the idea that college football teams from conferences that end up canceling their seasons would seek to play on their own.
Nebraska coach Scott Frost suggested his program would have "options" playing in another league this season now that the Big Ten has canceled the 2020 season. That led to widespread speculation on social media regarding any number of schools jumping conferences to play for one season only.
Want more college football in your life? Listen below and subscribe to the Cover 3 College Football podcast for top-notch insight and analysis beyond the gridiron.
Both Ohio State's Ryan Day and Michigan's Jim Harbaugh made strong social statements Monday in support of playing the 2020 season. This while the Big Ten at least appears to be planning for a potential cancellation.
"It's not optimal. Is it conceivable? Sure," one Power Five administrator told CBS Sports.
That might be a stretch.
A prominent television executive told CBS Sports that the Big Ten's TV contract with the Big Ten Network, Fox and ESPN might preclude the Cornhuskers from becoming a "free agent" for the 2020 season.
Such a restriction would be similar to the grant of rights agreements in the Big 12 and ACC. Those grants bind schools' TV rights to a specific conference for a period of years. The ACC's grant of rights goes to 2036, while the Big 12's lasts until 2025.
If a school leaves before those dates, the conference from which it departs would own its TV rights. That has been more than enough to keep those teams in place.
"It would be hard" for Nebraska to move, that TV executive said.
Still, it's fun to speculate. The Big Ten, Pac-12 and Mountain West plus UConn, Old Dominion and UMass have all canceled their 2020 seasons. The Big Ten, Pac-12 and MWC are hoping to play in spring 2021.
The Pac-12 canceled its 2020 season shortly after the Big Ten did Tuesday, leaving the ACC, Big 12 and SEC to make decisions about whether to move on and play this season. The ACC has said it "absolutely" intends to play this season, while the SEC says its medical experts have given it the green light to play at this time. The Big 12 is struggling to decide.
Notre Dame has temporarily joined the ACC for one year in 2020. It will add its $15 million payout from NBC into the league's coffers and receive an equal piece of the total TV rights pie.
...
With Big Ten, Pac-12 postponing season, what does that mean for Miami, ACC, rest of college football? (sun-sentinel.com; Furones & Lerner)
As the list of college football conferences holding off on a fall season grows with the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponements to the spring on Tuesday afternoon, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Atlantic Coast Conference, in which the Miami Hurricanes play, would follow with a similar measure.
“We will continue to follow our process that has been in place for months and has served us well,” the ACC said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “We understand the need to stay flexible and be prepared to adjust as medical information and the landscape evolves.”
The ACC said it will base decisions on advice from its Medical Advisory Group, which put together a list of medical and testing protocols ahead of unveiling its recently revised fall schedule.
“I don’t really worry about Big Ten,” said UM running back Cam’Ron Harris following Monday night’s practice, as reports had already been swirling about the move. “I’m just worried about ACC, our conference. We’re ready to play, and we don’t worry about what’s on the outside.”
Florida State president John Thrasher backed up the idea of playing the fall season with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at FSU on Tuesday.
...
The ACC is delaying the inevitable (gobblercountry.com; Reynolds)
Throughout much of the weekend and Monday, rumors swirled that two major conferences would be canceling or postponing their football seasons. Tuesday confirmed those reports as the Big Ten and the Pac-12 postponed all fall sports and will instead look ahead to the spring, much like high school fall sports across many states.
Big Ten Statement on 2020-21 Fall Seasonhttps://t.co/BCiRSzeAPL
Late last week the MAC became the first Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conference to cancel its football season. After Tuesday’s announcements, four of the ten FBS conferences have confirmed that they will not be playing football this fall - the Mountain West Conference being the fourth.
Counting the seven FBS independent schools, there are 130 schools at the FBS level. As of writing, 50 schools are out of the fall season, 38%. The conferences still planning to play at the moment include the ACC, the SEC, the Big 12, the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA and the Sun Belt Conference.
However, Conference USA member Old Dominion has already announced plans to sit out the 2020 fall season. Rumors are swirling that the Big 12 is on the fence and that Conference USA may be the next group to make the official decision to punt to the spring. If the other Group of 5 conferences sit out, that would be nearly 90 of the 130 FBS schools. At what point does the NCAA step in?
...
Other
Blue Jays win first ‘home’ game in Buffalo, top Marlins in 10th (AP)
Bo Bichette, Travis Shaw and the wandering Toronto Blue Jays felt just fine in their new nest.
In the first major league game in Buffalo since 1915, Shaw hit an RBI single with the bases loaded in the 10th inning as the Blue Jays settled into refitted Sahlen Field with a 5-4 win over the Miami Marlins on Tuesday night.
“We’re still staying in a hotel, but it almost felt like the first game of the year. To go out and say, ‘All right, this is our spot,’ I think we did well,” said Bichette, who hit a three-run homer.
Barred from playing in Toronto by the Canadian government over concerns about the coronavirus, the Blue Jays spent nearly three weeks on the road before moving into the ballpark of their Triple-A affiliate as their temporary home this year.
And in the city famed for wings and beef on weck sandwiches, Toronto made it a tasty home opener. The downtown park, a couple blocks from Lake Erie and seating nearly 17,000, was empty because of the virus outbreak.
“It’s definitely a little different,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said.
Francisco Cervelli's three-run homer with two outs in the Miami ninth made it 4-all.
Logan Forsythe then nearly put the Marlins ahead with a long drive in the 10th that originally was ruled a two-run homer, then reversed to a foul ball on review — the replay cameras were among the upgrades made at the park to get it up to big league standards.
There had not been a major league game in Buffalo since Sept. 8, 1915, when the Blues swept a doubleheader from the Baltimore Terrapins at Federal League Park. Those teams were part of the short-lived Federal League.
Baseball in Buffalo did get major play in the 1984 film “The Natural” starring Robert Redford. Playing Roy Hobbs for the New York Knights in the movie, the game action scenes took place in old War Memorial Stadium, the place that hosted football’s Bills and minor league ball.
Shaw's hit might not have had the same drama as Hobbs' film-closing homer, but it produced the same result — a win.
“We’ve lost a couple of games late, so it was nice to come back,” Shaw said. “My job was just to try to get the ball to the outfield, and thankfully with two strikes, I was able to do that.”
...
