Let the madness leading up to Wednesday reach a fever pitch. But I'm going to start double posting this both with a link and easy to read.
What was he Thinking?
Maybe it has been overused. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s the right decision. But when you’re talking about a song that aptly reflects that day that is approaching, then it’s time to break out your Flo Rida and welcome the class of 2016 to Your House.
For the sake of making the right video choice, I decide to steer away from the original. But the song is pretty slick anyway.
Before we get into this, don’t forget Big Monday at 8:00 pm tonight at the Ferrell Center when the Bears make their only appearance in this showcase window against Texas. The crowds at the Ferrell Center have been outstanding over the last two games, 10,200 against Oklahoma and 9,600 against Georgia. This should be great contest between two programs that are rising. We’ll get into it later today. But Texas also appears to be finding itself in its first year with Shaka Smart. The Longhorns looked pretty good in their win against Vanderbilt Saturday. Texas should draw a near capacity crowd like it always does. And keep a good thought for Scott Drew and his health. Pretty tough to be coaching through his neck issues.
****
So how is it that 17- and 18-year old young men, who have the ability to play Power 5 Division I college football, can drive a good many of us over the edge of normalcy?
The addiction to this recruiting web site and others is extremely intense with multiple checks by the second. This is starting to nearly rival the day games on Thursday and Friday afternoon in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Statistics show that productivity in the work place drops heavily on those days.
There are a lot of different ways of looking at this. Passion to track a program’s every move is at the center of it. These young men are fueling the hopes for Baylor to continue a trend that has never been seen before. That’s what happens when you’re really good at this.
I’m also sensing that a higher percentage of the Baylor community is becoming more active with things like recruiting. More people want to know about the program. More people want to know if they really have a chance at Player A or B. This is a process. You really don’t see the payoff until years after the success has started. Sometimes, the fans are the last to know.
Plain ole excitement for Baylor’s football program has never reached levels like this. Ever. Even if it were to drop all the way to No. 20 in the national rankings – as of Monday, Baylor was No. 11 – it would still set the percent for a program that no less than eight years ago was mired in obscurity.
Obscurity is the right word. I was going to use this on National Signing Day as part of the presentation. But some of the recruits have done the right thing by either turning off their phones, ignoring the messages or staying off social media because they’re worn out by it. I don’t blame them.
Consider the connection between Art Briles and this class. He arrived for his introductory press conference in December, 2007. His first season was 2008. Most of these recruits were either 9-years-old or 10.
So I asked them when you were that age when Briles started, what did they know about Baylor’s football program? Here’s what they said:
>Micheal Johnson, DE, Fort Bend Hightower: “I never heard of them.’’
>Kameron Martin, RB, Port Arthur Memorial: “I really didn’t know anything about Baylor.’’
>Raleigh Texada, DB, Frisco Centennial: “Pretty much nothing about them. Honestly, I would see Baylor pop up on the news every now and then and the NCAA football video game. But I hardly knew anything.”
>Grayland Arnold, DB, Kountze: “To be 100 percent honest, I knew absolutely nothing about Baylor…only college I knew was Texas because my sister went there.’’
>Deonte Williams, LB, Plano Prestonwood: “I was raised in Florida (remember his dad played Florida State), so Baylor wasn’t a stress.’’
>Jared Atkinson, WR, Mesquite Horn: “I didn’t really know anything. I just knew they were on the NCAA games.’’
>J.P. Urquidez, OL, Copperas Cove: “Nothing at all.’’
As uncomfortable as those repetitive responses may have been to read, it really offers context to the mountain Baylor football has had to climb in order to move from a 10-year-old’s perspective to where it is now. This is how hard this job was that Briles inherited.
He wasn’t only trying to make inroads with high school coaches across Texas to attract players. He was trying to make inroads with those players little brothers or cousins or nephews or boys around the block to understand that really Baylor offered a choice. But it took a signature moment – Robert Griffin III winning the Heisman – to attract them. Then it took building upon with consecutive Big 12 championships and beating Texas and Oklahoma consistently to convince them.
Now, think about what present day 10-year-olds know about Baylor football. There’s no contest. They’ll use whatever verbiage they use to describe how live Baylor is. They get the swag. Oh, if people are dogging your program, not only does Baylor have their attention, it should also be taken as a compliment.
This is why Briles has routinely said that he’s trying to attract the younger fans because they’re really the foundation for the next 20-30 years. When you build something, you want it to sustain for decades not 5-7 years before it crumbles. There will be some tough seasons. They’re unavoidable. The program has to sustain. That's what Briles is attempting to do.
And so here we are just a couple of days from when it all comes together. I’m not patting myself on the back with an I told you so moment. However, the way this class was coming together and the way the program was in contention for major names, it became pretty clear Baylor’s fate wasn’t going to be known until National Signing Day. Nacogdoches safety and Rivals100 prospect Brandon Jones announces at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. Baylor will be one of the hats along with Texas and most likely Texas A&M and Arkansas. You’ll scream at the top of your lungs if he puts on the Baylor hat. You’ll be devastated if he chooses one of the other three. Waco LaVega and Rivals250 prospect Parrish Cobb doesn’t seem to have anything formal set. It could be that at some point on Wednesday morning, the Baylor football program will tweet out his signing. It may be that Oklahoma does it. After all, he’s still committed there.
You could get a tweet from Baylor that the ghost of 325-pound offensive lineman Malcolm Pridgeon has signed. Or it could wind up being tweeted by Ohio State. Then you have place-kicker Quinn Nordin who may send his to Michigan (the favorite), Baylor or USC.
Right there, you have four decisions. Baylor is neck deep with the names of college football blue bloods. At some point, you have to wonder if this is just an out-of-body experience.
My advice? Start getting used to this.
****
I’ve had the chance to watch a couple of clips of ESPN’s Outside the Lines follow up report to the university’s issue and the football program’s dealing with the sexual assault case involving Sam Ukwuachu and Tevin Elliott, who is now in prison. OTL took it beyond that. Not much has changed from the position I wrote in this space back in September.
I do think the university should have been more up front with granting interviews. But this is a private Christian university that has typically shared something when it believes the time is right. I get that. I understand that. I don’t agree with that philosophy on all fronts, especially when you’re talking about a matter like this. This is where Baylor needed to be more proactive. Again, I think the football program did what it should have done by letting the university handle a situation like this. I think all football programs should if they haven't already. And yes, when Ukwuachu was formally charged, he probably should have been removed from the program. But he got his day in court. He was convicted. He’s serving his sentence and now he has to live with this for the rest of his life.
Baylor has the power to control the message that it wants to convey regarding this. By getting in front of it more publicly on some scale, it would have helped. Obviously, with Judge Starr holding an extensive law background (He was dean of the Pepperdine Law School when Baylor baseball coach Steve Rodriguez was there), he’s well aware of what is appropriate to say and what isn’t. I still don’t know why Associate Dean for Student Conduct Administration Bethany McCraw is still working for the university after it was pretty clear (that was laid out in the Ukwuachu trial) she didn’t handle this at all well. Only Baylor knows why McCaw is still there.
The university did not separate the student-athlete from Ukwuachu. I could care less about the victim’s rumored reputation. She was assaulted. That hurt lasts a lifetime. If it was my daughter, I would be filled with emotions – none of them good. It was a major mistake. Don’t ever excoriate the victim because I’ll take you back to the movie, “A time to Kill”. In his closing argument, Matthew McConaughey's attorney character asks the jury to close its eyes and he describes in detail the sexual assault on that little girl. At the end, he tells the jury to envision that happening if it was their little girl. For those of us who have daughters (I have two who are now in their teens), it is one of the most terrifying thoughts to have.
That said, what also was equally embarrassing was the Twitter war that ensued following the airing. This is what is shameful about this social media device. The language, hatred and hypocrisy being spewed on a Sunday morning was about as low as it gets. Understandable when an issue like this comes to the front. It will always draw reaction. But when there are those who using the moral compass to justify their argument – while behind the scenes they’re hoping this airing will cause Brandon Jones to choose Texas or Parrish Cobb to stay with Oklahoma – they’re no better than Sam U. If Jones signs with Baylor, who knows what they’ll say. If he signs with Texas, they’ll say it was justice or something like that.
I didn’t participate in it. Now, on Friday I did tweet something about a tweet previewing this show. When I drew negative reactions, I never responded. There’s no point. About 10 minutes later, I took it down. It was a terrible idea. No one wins.
Now, I’m trying to judge this for what it is. As for the timing right before NSD and with Baylor contending with Texas (yes, ESPN is the parent company of the Longhorn Network), you have every right to go grassy knoll there. It is odd. ESPN will explain it away as the natural course of it doing business. But we all knew that a follow up report was coming. There was just too much there for an investigative reporting team to not ignore. That’s just the way it goes.
But we’re in a 24-hour news cycle. Shortly, this will rotate off. And this will NOT be the reason why Baylor will not land Parrish Cobb or Brandon Jones.
****
>Wasn’t the Pro Bowl on Sunday? Did anyone watch it? Shouldn’t we just eliminate this game. I think I heard that there were more pro bowlers who dropped out of this game than any other in the history. I didn’t hear a number.
>As I was working Sunday night on this and other walks of life, I caught parts of Grease Live on FOX. It was pretty impressive. I did hear about the heartbreak of Vanessa Hudgens, who played Rizz. She lost her father to cancer on Saturday. She still did the liver performance on Sunday. I look at it as being a great way to honor her dad and use her talents as a therapeutic agent. Anyway, it looked pretty good.
>I appreciate other sets of eyes. As it turns, out a Texas fan wound up lifting our material from the Patrick Hudson notes from Wednesday and tweeted it. One of our subscribers saw it and brought it to my attention. I did a little sleuthing worked with Rivals management and we took care of that culprit. The tweet was deleted. As cowardly as this act was, I do have to tell you that it’s a good sign in that more people are curious about the work we do and how we present ourselves on a public scale. You all have something to do with that.
****
Now a look at the other Baylor sports…
>Baylor track and field junior George Caddick was named the Big 12 Male Athlete of the Week, the conference office announced Wednesday.
The Manchester, United Kingdom, native, made his season debut in the 400 meters count by running what was at the time the No. 1 mark in the nation for the current indoor season.
Caddick captured the Rod McCravy Memorial 400-meter event title Saturday in Lexington, Ky., with a personal-best tying time of 46.54. The mark ended up being the second-fastest time in the country for the year and is the fastest quartermile in the Big 12.
>The fifth-ranked Baylor men's tennis team recorded two victories in the team's Saturday doubleheader with wins over Incarnate Word (0-1) and Midwestern State (0-1) at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center.
The 7-0 win over the Cardinals (0-1) and 6-1 victory over the Mustangs pushed Baylor to 5-0 on the season for the second time in three years
Baylor hosts a top-five matchup when No. 4 Texas A&M comes to town Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center. Free T-shirts will be given out to the first 200 fans in attendance
>No. 3 Baylor Equestrian (7-2, 2-1 Big 12) fell to Auburn (7-1, 2-1 SEC), 15-5, facing the nation’s top-ranked team in its home arena.
>The 15th-ranked Baylor women's tennis team dropped its second straight match on Saturday, falling 4-1 to 48th-ranked Tulsa indoors at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center.
Let's make it a great week!
What was he Thinking?
Maybe it has been overused. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s the right decision. But when you’re talking about a song that aptly reflects that day that is approaching, then it’s time to break out your Flo Rida and welcome the class of 2016 to Your House.
For the sake of making the right video choice, I decide to steer away from the original. But the song is pretty slick anyway.
Before we get into this, don’t forget Big Monday at 8:00 pm tonight at the Ferrell Center when the Bears make their only appearance in this showcase window against Texas. The crowds at the Ferrell Center have been outstanding over the last two games, 10,200 against Oklahoma and 9,600 against Georgia. This should be great contest between two programs that are rising. We’ll get into it later today. But Texas also appears to be finding itself in its first year with Shaka Smart. The Longhorns looked pretty good in their win against Vanderbilt Saturday. Texas should draw a near capacity crowd like it always does. And keep a good thought for Scott Drew and his health. Pretty tough to be coaching through his neck issues.
****
So how is it that 17- and 18-year old young men, who have the ability to play Power 5 Division I college football, can drive a good many of us over the edge of normalcy?
The addiction to this recruiting web site and others is extremely intense with multiple checks by the second. This is starting to nearly rival the day games on Thursday and Friday afternoon in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Statistics show that productivity in the work place drops heavily on those days.
There are a lot of different ways of looking at this. Passion to track a program’s every move is at the center of it. These young men are fueling the hopes for Baylor to continue a trend that has never been seen before. That’s what happens when you’re really good at this.
I’m also sensing that a higher percentage of the Baylor community is becoming more active with things like recruiting. More people want to know about the program. More people want to know if they really have a chance at Player A or B. This is a process. You really don’t see the payoff until years after the success has started. Sometimes, the fans are the last to know.
Plain ole excitement for Baylor’s football program has never reached levels like this. Ever. Even if it were to drop all the way to No. 20 in the national rankings – as of Monday, Baylor was No. 11 – it would still set the percent for a program that no less than eight years ago was mired in obscurity.
Obscurity is the right word. I was going to use this on National Signing Day as part of the presentation. But some of the recruits have done the right thing by either turning off their phones, ignoring the messages or staying off social media because they’re worn out by it. I don’t blame them.
Consider the connection between Art Briles and this class. He arrived for his introductory press conference in December, 2007. His first season was 2008. Most of these recruits were either 9-years-old or 10.
So I asked them when you were that age when Briles started, what did they know about Baylor’s football program? Here’s what they said:
>Micheal Johnson, DE, Fort Bend Hightower: “I never heard of them.’’
>Kameron Martin, RB, Port Arthur Memorial: “I really didn’t know anything about Baylor.’’
>Raleigh Texada, DB, Frisco Centennial: “Pretty much nothing about them. Honestly, I would see Baylor pop up on the news every now and then and the NCAA football video game. But I hardly knew anything.”
>Grayland Arnold, DB, Kountze: “To be 100 percent honest, I knew absolutely nothing about Baylor…only college I knew was Texas because my sister went there.’’
>Deonte Williams, LB, Plano Prestonwood: “I was raised in Florida (remember his dad played Florida State), so Baylor wasn’t a stress.’’
>Jared Atkinson, WR, Mesquite Horn: “I didn’t really know anything. I just knew they were on the NCAA games.’’
>J.P. Urquidez, OL, Copperas Cove: “Nothing at all.’’
As uncomfortable as those repetitive responses may have been to read, it really offers context to the mountain Baylor football has had to climb in order to move from a 10-year-old’s perspective to where it is now. This is how hard this job was that Briles inherited.
He wasn’t only trying to make inroads with high school coaches across Texas to attract players. He was trying to make inroads with those players little brothers or cousins or nephews or boys around the block to understand that really Baylor offered a choice. But it took a signature moment – Robert Griffin III winning the Heisman – to attract them. Then it took building upon with consecutive Big 12 championships and beating Texas and Oklahoma consistently to convince them.
Now, think about what present day 10-year-olds know about Baylor football. There’s no contest. They’ll use whatever verbiage they use to describe how live Baylor is. They get the swag. Oh, if people are dogging your program, not only does Baylor have their attention, it should also be taken as a compliment.
This is why Briles has routinely said that he’s trying to attract the younger fans because they’re really the foundation for the next 20-30 years. When you build something, you want it to sustain for decades not 5-7 years before it crumbles. There will be some tough seasons. They’re unavoidable. The program has to sustain. That's what Briles is attempting to do.
And so here we are just a couple of days from when it all comes together. I’m not patting myself on the back with an I told you so moment. However, the way this class was coming together and the way the program was in contention for major names, it became pretty clear Baylor’s fate wasn’t going to be known until National Signing Day. Nacogdoches safety and Rivals100 prospect Brandon Jones announces at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. Baylor will be one of the hats along with Texas and most likely Texas A&M and Arkansas. You’ll scream at the top of your lungs if he puts on the Baylor hat. You’ll be devastated if he chooses one of the other three. Waco LaVega and Rivals250 prospect Parrish Cobb doesn’t seem to have anything formal set. It could be that at some point on Wednesday morning, the Baylor football program will tweet out his signing. It may be that Oklahoma does it. After all, he’s still committed there.
You could get a tweet from Baylor that the ghost of 325-pound offensive lineman Malcolm Pridgeon has signed. Or it could wind up being tweeted by Ohio State. Then you have place-kicker Quinn Nordin who may send his to Michigan (the favorite), Baylor or USC.
Right there, you have four decisions. Baylor is neck deep with the names of college football blue bloods. At some point, you have to wonder if this is just an out-of-body experience.
My advice? Start getting used to this.
****
I’ve had the chance to watch a couple of clips of ESPN’s Outside the Lines follow up report to the university’s issue and the football program’s dealing with the sexual assault case involving Sam Ukwuachu and Tevin Elliott, who is now in prison. OTL took it beyond that. Not much has changed from the position I wrote in this space back in September.
I do think the university should have been more up front with granting interviews. But this is a private Christian university that has typically shared something when it believes the time is right. I get that. I understand that. I don’t agree with that philosophy on all fronts, especially when you’re talking about a matter like this. This is where Baylor needed to be more proactive. Again, I think the football program did what it should have done by letting the university handle a situation like this. I think all football programs should if they haven't already. And yes, when Ukwuachu was formally charged, he probably should have been removed from the program. But he got his day in court. He was convicted. He’s serving his sentence and now he has to live with this for the rest of his life.
Baylor has the power to control the message that it wants to convey regarding this. By getting in front of it more publicly on some scale, it would have helped. Obviously, with Judge Starr holding an extensive law background (He was dean of the Pepperdine Law School when Baylor baseball coach Steve Rodriguez was there), he’s well aware of what is appropriate to say and what isn’t. I still don’t know why Associate Dean for Student Conduct Administration Bethany McCraw is still working for the university after it was pretty clear (that was laid out in the Ukwuachu trial) she didn’t handle this at all well. Only Baylor knows why McCaw is still there.
The university did not separate the student-athlete from Ukwuachu. I could care less about the victim’s rumored reputation. She was assaulted. That hurt lasts a lifetime. If it was my daughter, I would be filled with emotions – none of them good. It was a major mistake. Don’t ever excoriate the victim because I’ll take you back to the movie, “A time to Kill”. In his closing argument, Matthew McConaughey's attorney character asks the jury to close its eyes and he describes in detail the sexual assault on that little girl. At the end, he tells the jury to envision that happening if it was their little girl. For those of us who have daughters (I have two who are now in their teens), it is one of the most terrifying thoughts to have.
That said, what also was equally embarrassing was the Twitter war that ensued following the airing. This is what is shameful about this social media device. The language, hatred and hypocrisy being spewed on a Sunday morning was about as low as it gets. Understandable when an issue like this comes to the front. It will always draw reaction. But when there are those who using the moral compass to justify their argument – while behind the scenes they’re hoping this airing will cause Brandon Jones to choose Texas or Parrish Cobb to stay with Oklahoma – they’re no better than Sam U. If Jones signs with Baylor, who knows what they’ll say. If he signs with Texas, they’ll say it was justice or something like that.
I didn’t participate in it. Now, on Friday I did tweet something about a tweet previewing this show. When I drew negative reactions, I never responded. There’s no point. About 10 minutes later, I took it down. It was a terrible idea. No one wins.
Now, I’m trying to judge this for what it is. As for the timing right before NSD and with Baylor contending with Texas (yes, ESPN is the parent company of the Longhorn Network), you have every right to go grassy knoll there. It is odd. ESPN will explain it away as the natural course of it doing business. But we all knew that a follow up report was coming. There was just too much there for an investigative reporting team to not ignore. That’s just the way it goes.
But we’re in a 24-hour news cycle. Shortly, this will rotate off. And this will NOT be the reason why Baylor will not land Parrish Cobb or Brandon Jones.
****
>Wasn’t the Pro Bowl on Sunday? Did anyone watch it? Shouldn’t we just eliminate this game. I think I heard that there were more pro bowlers who dropped out of this game than any other in the history. I didn’t hear a number.
>As I was working Sunday night on this and other walks of life, I caught parts of Grease Live on FOX. It was pretty impressive. I did hear about the heartbreak of Vanessa Hudgens, who played Rizz. She lost her father to cancer on Saturday. She still did the liver performance on Sunday. I look at it as being a great way to honor her dad and use her talents as a therapeutic agent. Anyway, it looked pretty good.
>I appreciate other sets of eyes. As it turns, out a Texas fan wound up lifting our material from the Patrick Hudson notes from Wednesday and tweeted it. One of our subscribers saw it and brought it to my attention. I did a little sleuthing worked with Rivals management and we took care of that culprit. The tweet was deleted. As cowardly as this act was, I do have to tell you that it’s a good sign in that more people are curious about the work we do and how we present ourselves on a public scale. You all have something to do with that.
****
Now a look at the other Baylor sports…
>Baylor track and field junior George Caddick was named the Big 12 Male Athlete of the Week, the conference office announced Wednesday.
The Manchester, United Kingdom, native, made his season debut in the 400 meters count by running what was at the time the No. 1 mark in the nation for the current indoor season.
Caddick captured the Rod McCravy Memorial 400-meter event title Saturday in Lexington, Ky., with a personal-best tying time of 46.54. The mark ended up being the second-fastest time in the country for the year and is the fastest quartermile in the Big 12.
>The fifth-ranked Baylor men's tennis team recorded two victories in the team's Saturday doubleheader with wins over Incarnate Word (0-1) and Midwestern State (0-1) at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center.
The 7-0 win over the Cardinals (0-1) and 6-1 victory over the Mustangs pushed Baylor to 5-0 on the season for the second time in three years
Baylor hosts a top-five matchup when No. 4 Texas A&M comes to town Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center. Free T-shirts will be given out to the first 200 fans in attendance
>No. 3 Baylor Equestrian (7-2, 2-1 Big 12) fell to Auburn (7-1, 2-1 SEC), 15-5, facing the nation’s top-ranked team in its home arena.
>The 15th-ranked Baylor women's tennis team dropped its second straight match on Saturday, falling 4-1 to 48th-ranked Tulsa indoors at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center.
Let's make it a great week!
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