NCAA hypocrisy rears its ugly head

I was catching up on the day’s events on Rivals just now, and this recent story highlighting Duke’s plans to host a wrestling camp, right here in our own backyard in Highland Park is more than a little disquieting. I mean, Duke’s coach is none-too-subtle about his intentions with the camp:

“New Jersey is one of the best states for wrestling,” Anderson said, “so it’s obviously a strategic athletic and academic target for recruiting. New Jersey is just a great state because they often have very smart kids that can get into Duke University and are great wrestlers, so we wanted to bring Duke up to the Northeast to get exposure.”

Coach Schiano and staff did the exact same thing in Florida for years, before the likes of Vince Dooley agitated for and enacted a Schiano rule, barring a useful tool for unearthing under the radar sleepers, with the added bonus of cementing ties with key local high school football programs in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Whether or not it was good for the campers was irrelevant (because it certainly was, only a fraction of them ever making the trek north). What’s in their best interest clearly played second fiddle to protecting local monopolies. Mid-tier ACC and SEC coaches didn’t want any Yankees moving in on their territory, or to have to work even harder at what increasingly has become a year-long pursuit.

Well, two can play at this game. I don’t know where this issue is on Tim Pernetti and Coach Goodale’s list of priorities, but they have every right to file a protest with the NCAA. If only to highlight the naked double standard used to justify enacting the Schiano rule in the first place.

I’m not necessarily upset with Highland Park here, although I strongly believe that every GMC school (if not every New Jersey school) needs to have a strong relationship with Rutgers, and vice versa.

Asked how he thought Rutgers University and coach Scott Goodale, who has done an outstanding job recruiting the Garden State over the past two years, might feel about the Blue Devils holding a clinic less than five minutes from the state university’s campus, Anderson said:

“I personally don’t know how they would react. Wrestling has some pretty tough characters. They love to compete. I don’t think they are offended by us going up there and running a clinic. (Goodale’s) obviously done a great job and when you have a great program, you don’t worry too much about what other programs do.”

Odds are, with only limited scholarships to play with, these kids wouldn’t have ended up at Rutgers anyway. But the likes of Eric Foster had little opportunity of staying home and playing for Florida’s Big Three football programs. They won’t give anyone without perfect measurables the time of day. What Florida is to football, New Jersey is to high school wrestling; the 800-lb gorilla that every out of state program wants to mine. Two can play the rent seeking game.

Defending monotony

College football blogs are near universal in their praise for Smart Football, and indeed the site is very well done. As an avowed hater of “spread” style offenses, I’m certainly going to take issue with a lot of the pro-spread and gadgetry sentiment at S.F. Doesn’t mean anything with regard to either side’s validity; it’s a simple disagreement.

When Dr. Saturday approvingly quoted Chris’s latest “the NFL is boring, and here’s why” screed, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to respond. Admittedly, I do not know nearly as much about football strategy as Chris, and clearly concede his expertise there. However, I think that two of his points don’t quite mesh all that well.

First, the opening paragraph:

I am frequently asked why I don’t more often discuss NFL offenses. Haven’t many of these college gurus been chewed up by the NFL? Didn’t the NFL “prove” that the run & shoot can’t work? Isn’t the NFL football’s highest level, and doesn’t it therefore have the most money and resources, the best people, and shouldn’t the result then be that NFL football is the most strategically interesting?

Check out his later concession of the NFL’s advantage when it comes to superior athleticism.

Defenses have the same issue of 80/20 blandness, though they will sometimes give incredibly exotic looks solely due to the freakish nature of some of the players. NFL cornerbacks can constantly play “press-bail” — meaning they can show bump and run and yet be able to “bail” and play deep if necessary — because they are so athletic, and I’ve seen guys like Ravens safety Ed Reed do miraculous things like line up directly on the line of scrimmage over a tight-end and then at the snap retreat and play deep half-field safety on the opposite side of the field. Other than the kind of stuff that you can only do if you’ve won the DNA lottery, NFL defenses all tend to be the same as well.

I think this concession is where the argument stumbles. Like any scheme on any level, the purpose of the spread schemes is to create mismatches. The piece attributes the NFL’s blandness to tunnel vision on this particular point, and I’m not quite sure why. When Mike Leach’s offense lines up in a shotgun, four wide look against Kansas State; presumably the whole purpose of that exotic look is to get one of his speedy Red Raiders matched up against a slower wildcard. The mismatch will be there, and Leach’s latest quarterback du jour will exploit it. With NFL talent at such a higher level than the dregs of major conference football (and Tech usually plays a weak out of conference schedule), that dog isn’t going to hunt, day in and day out, at that level. When you have Tom Brady and Randy Moss? Maybe.

Obama not coming

Brian Bennett spoke with Devin McCourty Wednesday on the topic of offseason workouts.

Seahawks.com notes the parallels between Mike Teel and Matt Hasselbeck. Spooky (not really). Teel also was the subject of another recent article.

The Star News posted a Q&A with James Beatty.

Paramus football has to be pleased with its recent showing in the Schiano Shootout.

There were reports that Quincy Douby could be headed to Memphis, but he’s staying in Toronto for now.

WNYC gets down to the important questions, like whether or not Barack Obama will visit the Grease Trucks. However, due to unexpected demand, the event was moved to the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel. Let me get this straight – 52,000 signed up, and only 17,500 can get tickets. Is it possible to halt construction for a day, and pack everyone into Rutgers Stadium? Maybe the organizers weren’t counting on an event of that size, but if Corzine’s campaign does want to energize voter turnout, moving the event is a mistake.