Connor O’Gara from SaturdayDownSouth.com talked with Phil Elson, Matt Jenkins and Matt Travis (Halftime) on ESPN Arkansas Monday about how closely college football is watching the start of baseball as a guide to making decisions.
Busy weekend for Pittman picking up one expected commit plus a surprise
Nikki Chavanelle of HawgBeat.com with Derek Ruscin and Zach Arns (Ruscin & Zach) Monday afternoon on ESPN Arkansas a big recruiting weekend for Sam Pittman and the Razorbacks.
ON HALFTIME: Zimmerman on how good Howell was when playing for Hogs
Arkansas men’s basketball analyst Matt Zimmerman talking Monday about former standout player Lenzie Howell, who passed away in Dallas over the weekend.
Zimmerman told Phil Elson, Matt Jenkins and Matt Travis (Halftime) on ESPN Arkansas about how good Howell was during his playing days when he was honored with multiple MVP awards in post-season tournaments.
Busch Light Apple Morning Rush Podcast — SEC only schedule plus West preview
Tye & Tommy on the outlook for Arkansas if there are only conference games played, plus a West preview!
Lack of leadership making college football target of some, says Brando
While the kangeroo court in Indianapolis desperately clings to having some kind of control over college sports it has become crystal clear they are like a ship in the dark with no compass.
Mark Emmert, the current ringmaster, is making millions every year and the only thing he’s proven is he couldn’t organize a kindergarten birthday party without forming a committee first.
Especially when it comes to football, something the NCAA really doesn’t control at the big time level. That’s done by the five conference commissioners who can’t agree on much.
“I have personal relationships with all the commissioners in college football,” Fox Sports’ Tim Brando told Derek Ruscin and Zach Arns (Ruscin & Zach) last week on ESPN Arkansas. “I know they are well-meaning, but to get together and decide in unison to do something, to do this point … it’s never happened.”
Thus is the problem. Emmert doesn’t lead. He forms committees so others can make a decision.
Even Paul Finebaum last week on ESPN called for Emmert to be replaced.
“Mark Emmert is a complete failure,” Finebaum said.
It could be argued that Finebaum should have figured out over a decade ago the NCAA doesn’t control college football but that’s not surprising, either.
College football needs somebody in charge. Where is that sport’s Roy Kramer or Mike Slive these days?
“It’s never happened in the 150-year span of college football,” Brando said. “This is no longer something to joke about … this is something that needs to be done.”
The Big 10 and Pac 12 last week announced conference-only schedules for the coming season. While that may be alternative, it did leave a lot of other conferences scrambling.
“The way college football is set up — it’s leadership infrastructure — has always been about take care of your own,” Brando said. “The Big 10 did what it felt it needed to do to take care of their own.”
In the process they showed they may have kinda had a knee-jerk reaction.
“The Iowa-Iowa State game is a bus ride and that game’s not gonna take place now,” Brando said. “Really? Yet we’re going have Nebraska play at Rutgers? Help me.”
Sorry, Timmy B, but there is no help, although he would clearly like to see Oliver Luck as the commissioner of college football. He’s about the only one qualified that might actually take the job of dealing with the NCAA.
“Whatever the plan is, these guys need to roll it out now,” Brando said. “Otherwise, those holier-than-thou’s that like to take their shots and love to talk about the exploitation of players not getting paid, the mob is there. They are ready to take down college football.”
College football should not shut down. There is statistically no data that shows a single player’s death or one getting seriously ill. Don’t talk to me about spreading it to other people.
Everybody keeps looking at positive test results and that’s probably not going away, even with a vaccine that will help further cut the low mortality rate even further. That’s what the national medical equivalent of weathermen have said.
While a lot of is not known, there is clear data the virus doesn’t have much effect on players, coaches or the people around it. We would have heard about any deaths … guaranteed. If anybody had gotten seriously ill we would have heard about that through social media or somewhere.
There are some in the media that sound at times like they really don’t want college football. Some want to present the picture they care more about people than the individual does.
“The media outside the realm of sports wants everything to be shut down,” Brando said. “There is a segment of sports media that has a particular lean to the left and, to a certain extent, they are going to be affected by what they read.
“They see college football as something that can be — and should be — attacked right now. There’s really no defense mechanism for it.”
Which is where the whole reason that the NCAA is letting the entire sport run around in complete chaos and confusion.
“They haven’t had jurisdiction over college football since 1984,” Brando said.
Television got control then and the NCAA has looked like someone running around in the Arkansas summers with a flyswatter trying to nail flies.
“These clowns going after college football that are outside the realm of sports media don’t know jack about squat about college sports,” Brando said. “But they want it shut down because there’s not a bat phone ringing from the commissioner like it would be from the NFL or the NBA.”
Like a lot of things going on in the world today, it comes down to leadership. In the case of college football, it’s the lack of coordinated leadership.
“If you have no leadership, then you’re easily attacked,” Brando said. “College football has been shown to not have universal leadership so they have no defense mechanism. No public relations aid to help them fight off that kind of attack.”
Which is why college football needs somebody to say something definitive. Even the conference commissioners qualify everything as a wait-and-see approach.
“It’s only gonna get worse between now and whatever they roll out,” Brando said.
All of that is why common sense and actually looking at ALL the data is going to have to happen at some point soon.
The science says the players and coaches are safe.
Yes, playing sports is about money but maybe not how many think
To a certain extent, Hunter Yurachek appeared to try and have it both ways in his update Thursday on whether we’ll have football or not.
“Football is incredibly important to us,” he told the media in a Zoom press conference that lasted roughly 40 minutes. “My fellow SEC members would say the same thing.”
He then proceeded to simply break down the raw numbers. The numbers are what they are.
“For us, it generates about $70 million of our approximate $124 million budget,” Yurachek said. “Not to mention the economic impact Razorback football has across Northwest Arkansas and across our state.”
A lot of people will point to that as the primary reason college conferences are pushing like crazy to have a football season and not looking at “the science.” That’s a phrase they love to use in the constant knee-jerk fear reaction a lot keep having over the coronavirus.
Yes, it can be serious for some people and it is real.
But college athletes are at greater danger driving down the road or being struck by lightning than dying (or even getting seriously ill) of the coronavirus. THAT is “the science,” whether you want to look at the number or not.
Yurachek and everybody else involved in college athletics would not hesitate to start shutting things down if those starting happening.
“I hate the narrative that we’re doing this just for the money at this level,” Yurachek said. “It’s not about the money.”
While that is true, college athletics is looking at “the science” like nobody else seems particularly interested in doing.
The other big part of a lot of folks don’t realize is just how much colleges spend on the players. It’s not a private industry where they get a commission on what the profit of college athletics.
It’s an arms race in college athletics and just running an athletic department in the Southeastern Conference is mind-boggling expensive … just to try and keep pace.
“The majority of the financial benefits go back into the lives and the experience of those student-athletes,” Yurachek said. “From their scholarships, it’s $11 million … their scholarship bill. We’ve spent $4 million for food.”
College kids can eat. If you do the math it works out to just under $1,100 per month per athlete or less than $40 per day for college kids burning more calories in a day than some families.
“We have a full time mental health division with three full time mental health people,” Yurachek said, going into details. “We have athletic trainers. We have strength and conditioning coaches. We have some of the best head coaches and assistant coaches across this country that are helping them train and get better at their sport.
“We have an academic staff that helped them achieve a 3.43 cumulative GPA this past spring semester.”
It’s not about the coaches and high-level administrative people making good salaries, which they do, of course. Not as much as a lot of other schools in the league.
Several folks like to sit back and say shutting down college athletics right now is the wise choice. In Arkansas, no matter your age or physical condition you have a 98.9% chance of surviving the virus. Some may have long rehabs or even permanent conditions but that is not a big percentage.
Across the country not a single college athlete has died or even required intensive hospital care. We would have heard about it if it happened, considering the way the media jumps on every single increase.
Yet some don’t even look at the potential harm to college athletes without sports.
“We invest a significant amount of the resources we generate back into the lives and experiences of our student athletes,” Yurachek said. “That’s a financial piece of it.”
Ultimately, it is about the health and well-being of the players, which is what everybody says is the most important thing during this health crisis.
It may not be the way some want to view it, but “the science” says it is safe to play college sports.
Maybe in more ways than some realize.
Why Dallas doesn’t seem that interesting in closing deal with Prescott
When Dallas couldn’t get a deal done with quarterback Dak Prescott before the deadline last week, some fans were jumping up and down and others questioned why it wasn’t done.
Let’s not start a pity party for Dak. He’s going to get $31.4 million for playing this season.
And the Cowboys would have paid more but Prescott wants a four-year deal. The Jones want five. Doing that gives Dallas a little more wiggle room in the salary cap, which is why Kansas City in effect locked up Patrick Mahomes for a dozen years (he’s still got two years left on his rookie deal).
Everyone is going crazy trying to understand why the Cowboys won’t just agree to a deal that pays Dak what quarterbacks make that have won a playoff game … or a Super Bowl.
The Cowboys are gambling due to the coronavirus that the salary cap is going to drop next year. There are estimates it could fall up to 50%.
“Obviously there is a great amount of question when it comes to next year’s salary cap given the financial situation the entire world is in the middle of,” Blogging the Boys’ writer R.J. Ochoa told Derek Ruscin and Zach Arns (Ruscin & Zach) last week on ESPN Arkansas.
But he doesn’t think Prescott’s going anywhere else.
“If you’re trying to envision the most dramatic scenario possible, I don’t think in any way possible Dak Prescott is not part of the Dallas Cowboys in 2021,” Ochoa said. “The divorce mark — if you’re looking for that — is 2022.”
Similar to the way Kirk Cousins get squeezed out in Washington a couple of years ago.
Next year the franchise tag will be $37.7 based on today’s financial status. We’ll see about that next year.
“The year after that is $54 million, that’s a little bit of a tough cookie,” Ochoa said.
Both Jerry and Stephen Jones have said they want to keep Prescott with the Cowboys.
And in a league where contracts aren’t always what they seem to be and full of loopholes, don’t get hung up on the noise that goes into getting one of them done.
Dak ain’t gonna starve and the best way he can get a deal like one of the top quarterbacks is win games in January that matter.
SEC agrees athletes choosing to sit out due to virus keep scholarships
Despite the low risk for college athletes, the SEC on Friday afternoon announced that if any of them want to sit out due to the covid-19 situation, they can remain on scholarship.
The action is the result of a unanimous vote of the SEC’s presidents and chancellors following a recommendation of the conference’s athletics directors.
“SEC universities are committed to full support of its student-athletes, whether or not a student-athlete decides to participate in sports during these uncertain times,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey in a press release. “SEC student-athletes have frequently expressed their desire to compete, but it is important for student-athletes and their families to know the financial support committed to them by their institutions will not be at risk because of health concerns presented by the current pandemic.”
Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek also released a statement in support of the action:
“The announcement today by the Southeastern Conference that scholarships will be honored for student-athletes, regardless of whether they compete in the fall semester, aligns with the University of Arkansas’ commitment to the 465+ student-athletes within our program. In these extraordinary times, we remain focused on our mission of developing champions and Razorbacks for life. I anticipate that a majority of our student-athletes will choose to compete this year, if given the opportunity to do so. However, it is important for our student-athletes to know if they choose not to participate due to personal concerns related to the pandemic, they will continue to be supported.”
The SEC will continue to monitor developments related to COVID-19 to determine at a later date if the policy should be extended to the spring semester of 2021 or beyond.
The statistical numbers show a mortality ray slightly above zero for people under the age of 25 and, as of Friday, no athletes that reported back to colleges and universities has died.
Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek said Thursday afternoon they had “less than 10” athletes test positive for the virus and just two staff members.
He added only one had symptoms that lasted about 24 hours.
Torres: Everyone knows what’s at stake if there’s no college football season
With the status of the season up in the air, Fox Sports’ Aaron Torres said Friday afternoon the stakes are huge and everybody knows it.
Torrest was with Phil Elson, Matt Jenkins and Matt Travis (Halftime) on ESPN Arkansas.
