Video: N.C. State coaches tell us which famous people they resemble
What do The Most Interesting Man in the World, Tom Selleck, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Sean Payton have in common? They all share the honor of looking like N.C. State football coaches. Wait, maybe it's the other way around.
Either way, props to N.C. State for this entertaining look at its coaching staff away from the field.
And the top all-around athletic departments in the country are....
Since 1993, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and USA Today, have honored the nation's top all-around athletic departments with the Learfield Sports Directors Cup. Almost immediately since then, Stanford has taken the top prize back to Palo Alto and has yet to give it back.
In all actuality, North Carolina claimed the 1993 Cup, but Stanford has won every single title after that, including 2013, as the Cardinal were officially crowned this year's winners at the NACDA annual convention on Friday. Though the College World Series has yet to be played, Stanford is far enough ahead of the pack that the race has been called and Stanford has been awarded its 19th straight victory.
The program was expanded to Divisions II and II as well as NAIA in 1996 and includes a collection of sports, with football included. Twenty sports are taken into account in Division I, with 14 in Division II, 18 in Division III and 12 in NAIA.
Grand Canyon (Ariz.) won the Division II crown for a second and final time, as the school will join the Division I Western Athletic Conference beginning this fall. Williams College (Mass.) took home Division III honors for the 16th time in 18 tries, while Oklahoma Baptist won its first NAIA cup.
Here's how the standings looked in all four divisions.
Division I
1. Stanford
2. Florida
3. Michigan
4. UCLA
5. Penn State
6. Texas A&M
7. Notre Dame
8. Oklahoma
9. Georgia
10. Oklahoma
Division II
1. Grand Canyon (Ariz.)
2. Grand Valley State (Mich.)
3. Ashland (Ohio)
4. Minnesota State-Mankato
5. Adams State (Colo.)
Division III
1. Williams (Mass.)
2. Emory (Ga.)
3. Middlebury (Vt.)
4. Wisconsin-Whitewater
5. Washington (Mo.)
NAIA
1. Oklahoma Baptist
2. Lindsey Wilson (Ky.)
3. Concordia (Calif.)
4. Emby Riddle Aeronautical (Fla.)
5. Lee (Tenn.)
What Mike Gundy wanted in a new offensive coordinator
When Todd Monken left Oklahoma State for the Southern Miss head coaching job, Mike Gundy fielded a very informal search for his replacement. There was no committee to be formed, no high-priced search firm to be hired. As CBSSports.com's Jeremy Fowler relays, the only search firm Gundy enlisted was his desktop mouse, and the only committee he sought advice from was the football stats page at NCAA.com.
After dispatching three straight offensive coordinators to head coaching positions, Gundy knew exactly what he wanted in looking for the next person to direct the Oklahoma State attack:
- Must be good with quarterbacks.
- Must make good adjustments.
- Understands speed, tempo.
- Must be ready for outside criticism and welcome it.
So Gundy dialed up NCAA.com and was drawn to Division II Shippensburg and an offense that totaled nearly 530 yards per game led by a 37-year old coordinator named Mike Yurcich. From there, phone calls were made, a deeper statistical analysis was run and an in-person meeting was scheduled.
The rest, as we know, is history.
D-III program pays homage to their roots with new helmet design
It doesn't take very long to walk around the campus at Alma College (D-III - MI) on game day before seeing dozens of people dressed in plaid Scottish kilts (the entire band wears the kilts), and you quickly realize that they have one of the more unique environments in college football.
Their new helmets play homage to their school's heritage with the new plaid lettering in the block "A" and a new color scheme that fades from white to red.
Below is a picture of the new helmet, along with what they've traditionally worn in the past. With so many small colleges and recruits littering the landscape of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, this is a great move by head coach Greg Psconda and his Alma staff to creatively set themselves apart on the recruiting trail. Recruits will eat it up.
Without knowing the role that the coaching staff (who are good friends of The Scoop) played in the creative development, we'd like the point out that we're fans of both the creativity and the paint scheme.
UNC releases a second (& 3rd) dose of 'The Freak Show'
Just in case yesterday's initial dose of "The Freak Show" wasn't quite enough for you, UNC has released a second version.
...and this one is really good.
And the third one is equally powerful. Great job by the UNC video staff with these.
Video: 'I still get nervous before each practice'
Bradley Dale Peveto first worked with Mark Stoops back in 2000, and it was then that he knew that Stoops was going to make an excellent choice as a head coach some day.
When he got the call, coach Peveto says the opportunity to join Stoops' staff to coach the safeties and special teams was a "no brainer". He adds that the support of Big Blue Nation has really impressed him since arriving in Lexington as well.
While all of that isn't necessarily surprising (you could tell from his introductory press conference that Mark Stoops was ready for the opportunity), what did catch our attention was that Peveto admits in the clip that he still gets a little nervous before each practice because he wants his guys at the top of their game.
"I still get a little knot in my stomach before each practice, because I want my guys to be perfect. I want to do a great job of coaching. I still get that nervous feeling to prepare great, to make sure everything is in order, and that you've prepared your guys."
"With that said, I think it helps you perform at a high level with a lot of emotion."
Coach Peveto puts pressure on himself to make sure his unit performing, and with a resume full of stops like LSU, Houston, and Arkansas, it's evident that the nervousness he feels before each practice helps him coach players to their full potential.
Three and Out - Good news for the FCS?
1. If you're a frequent reader to this site, you know the Scoop is a sympathizer to the FCS in the Big Ten's desire to unilaterally banish all non-FBS programs from its schedule. It won't make up for the loss of paydays from trips to the Big House, the Horseshoe and Happy Valley, but Jason Belzer reported Thursday that ESPN is exploring the possibility of creating a 10-team FCS Football Challenge that would be a replica of the Worldwide Leader's Bracketbusters event during college basketball season. The FCS Football Challenge would reportedly take place the weekend before Labor Day, a crucial spot of TV real estate when the public is dying of pigskin starvation. A game between, say, Eastern Washington and North Dakota State in a time slot with no meaningful competition would be huge for a group of schools that could use the help.
2. Conference realignment has not at all been good for non-conference rivalries. The casualty list currently stands at Texas-Texas A&M, Kansas-Missouri, Oklahoma-Nebraska, BYU-Utah, Pittsburgh-West Virginia, Michigan-Notre Dame to name a few. It's certainly not on the level of the aforementioned rivalries, but David Borges of the New Haven (Conn.) Register reports that Boston College and Connecticut could be on the way to playing again. The pair has only met a dozen times on the gridiron (none since 2004), and it's always been more of a basketball rivarly, but it's a series that both fan bases would find interesting. We need more of that in college football. Now about those other rivalries....
3. If you're looking for a sleeper team this fall, take a peek at Rice. According to Phil Steele, the Owls return 85 percent of their lettermen (the most in FBS), 84 percent of their total yardage (24th most in FBS), and nearly 89 percent of their total tackles (third most in FBS) from a 2012 team that won its final five games to close the season. Only UTSA (85 percent/91 percent/89 percent) and Texas (82 percent/92 percent/83 percent) boast similar figures.
The most expensive road trips ever: Why bowl games cost what they cost
This shouldn't be breaking news to anyone: vacations are expensive. Moving one average-sized American family to the beach, or Disney World, or a new city, plus transportation, plus food, plus extras, will take a chunk out of anyone's budget. Now multiply that by about, oh, 100 and it's easy to see why headlines are made this time of year when the figures from bowl trips start to trickle out.
Thanks to Mark Snyder of the Detroit Free Press, we can look at exact figures from Michigan's trip to Tampa for the Outback Bowl to understand how, exactly, one football game can rival a Division III program's entire athletics budget.
Let's start with the travelling party. The Wolverines jetted a whopping 359 people among its team-and-staff party for an 11-day staff. Add together an 85-man roster, plus a 10-man coaching staff plus a few more support staffers and you get a whole lot of people taking a week and a half vacation on the maize and blue's dime. Even if every member of the travelling party shares a room, Michigan is still approaching a 2,000 night hotel bill. Now let's add another 332 band members and cheerleaders and another 18 university and athletic department big whigs for five nights apiece and Michigan is saddled with a $714,097 hotel bill.
Getting those 700-plus people to Tampa and back cost another $773,238. Moving the Wolverines' equipment and awards and entertaining the travelling party cost $84,000. Michigan also paid $39,000 in practice and laundry-related expenses. We've now passed the $1.6 million threshold, and it's not even game day yet.
The Outback Bowl required Michigan to purchase 10,300 tickets, 8,700 of which they were able to sell. Eating the remainder cost the Wolverines $118,990, but the Big Ten stepped in to cover just over $89,000 of that cost. All told, the Outback Bowl cost Michigan around $1.7 million.
The good news for Mike Vollmar, Michigan's director of football operations at the time, is that the trip came in under the Wolverines' $1.8 million budget.
While the Free Press was able to uncover the cost of Michigan's trip, there's no word on how much the Wolverines had to pay in counseling fees to recover from this.
