7/7 Recruiting Update

We’re still seeing more movement out of last week’s camp. Florida LB Marcus Thompson committed on Wednesday. He has highlights up on YouTube playing RB. Rivals lists offers from FSU and WVU, although you never know whether those reports are accurate or not, especially when a kid comes out of nowhere like this. Nice to get a player with good athleticism though.

The other new verbal, Jordan Thomas from upstate New York, is more of a known quantity. J.T. Tartacoff was disappointed that Thomas beat his 40 time. He too could end up on either side of the ball.

Piscataway athlete Jawaun Wynn also walked away from camp with an offer. He’s been looking sharp on the camp circuit, and could be a nice get for Rutgers if he pulls the trigger soon. It’ll be interesting to see if any other in-state players score offers in the near future as a result of their performances. Things will pick up briefly with key NJ targets as the season approaches in August.

Then, there’s the whole Chas Dodd question.

T.J. Clemmings has a new top 5.

Pittsburgh, Maryland, Rutgers, Florida and Ohio State are at the top of his list. Despite numerous Internet reports, Clemmings has not verbally committed to Pittsburgh. He hopes to take official visits to each of those five schools later this year, and intends to make a well-informed decision following his senior season.

MaxPreps: Is Notre Dame losing ground in New Jersey?

Offensive lineman Angelo Mangiro from Roxbury and running back Savon Huggins from St. Peter’s Prep will both be ranked among the top recruits nationally in their position. Notre Dame has its sights set on each.

Rutgers is already putting the full court press on both players. Greg Schiano has had success keeping top offensive linemen in-state recently, so that plays in the Scarlet Knights’ favor.

The Passaic football program sees Jorge Vicioso getting a scholarship (uh oh, we’re going to have to agree on the spelling at the some point) as a sign of their revival. It’s true; some of the bigger towns in NJ don’t produce the talent that their demographics would suggest. Nevermind New York City which develops even fewer players. (edit: url changed on me and link died, now fixed)

On Snark

Recently, I’ve been slowly making my way through a copy of Spy: The Funny Years. While technically a coffee table book, it is mainly in that form because publishing a regular-sized hardcover would not have allowed for reprinting articles from the now-departed magazine (unfortunately, in very small type). The anthology is at times, far too self-aggrandizing and loose in its praise. I’m willing to overlook that critical flaw, on the grounds that from the small sample of its content that I’m familiar with, Spy Magazine was a publication of the highest quality.

The purpose of this post is not to review the anthology, or to write an essay length treatise on the conceptual clarifications of snark (besides, I don’t think that I’m very good at that sort of task, and have been very unhappy with similar attempts in the past). However, I have picked up on two themes in my reading, relevant to current goings-on. One is the story of the magazine’s ultimately failure, largely owing to just plain dumb luck and bad timing. It’s an interesting cautionary tale in itself, but not the hackneyed point that I want to make here. If you remain curious, two seconds on Google should whet any cravings.

Spy was impossibly mean-spirited, and very much a product of its time, exactly what the image conscious late eighties deserved. Many elements in the publication were precursors of the internet, anticipating prevailing trends from two decades in the future. Most of these similarities stem from its being deliberately self-aware, fixated on celebrity as an end in of itself, and willing to take on other segments of the media without pulling punches. It deliberately tweaked the establishment, who played along when they weren’t pushing back.

Mostly though, Spy predated the web with its central emphasis on humor and vitriol, roughly being a Mad Magazine for adults if you will.¹