Archive for March, 2010
Day II: Pearl-to-BC buzz
Mar 31st
Mike Griffith chimes in:
Here’s the deal: Pearl makes $2.1 million at UT, his oldest son plays for him, his oldest daughter sings the national anthem at home games, his wife, Brandy, is from nearby Sevierville, and his two younger children are thriving in the Bearden school district.
I would be absolutely shocked if Pearl took any other college job anytime soon. He could have made $3 million at Memphis this season and took a pass on even interviewing.
Incidentally (regarding BC)…
Mar 30th
One has to wonder whether the apparent arrogance of the Boston College Athletic Department will hamper its chances of landing the coach it wants to replace Al Skinner.
Last year, BC famously threatened to fire football coach Jeff Jagodzinsky if he interviewed with the New York Jets. He did. They did.
Fifteen months later, BC fires their basketball coach. By all accounts, it was a surprise move. It was also a move that came less than a week after Skinner had interviewed for the St. John’s job.
I’m not saying BC fired Skinner for the same reason Jagodzinsky was fired. I’m just saying that sometimes things can seem just a little too coincidental to be purely coincidence.
If Karma is in the neighborhood, all of BC’s coaching choices might reject offers to speak with the school’s administrators about the job opportunity.
Pearl-to-BC speculation revs up
Mar 30th
Just about eight hours after Boston College becomes coach-less, the blogging world is afire with Bruce Pearl speculation.
Well, not really afire. But sorta.
Here’s a sampling:
Sparty & Friends: Will BC back the Brinks truck up to his door? He has been building something nice at Tennessee, as he just led them to their first Elite 8 appearance ever, and the SEC is much easier of a conference to compete in opposed to the the ACC. However, Pearl hasn’t stay too long in one place yet, so it wouldn’t shock us to see him head to New England. (My note: He hasn’t stayed too long in one place because he’s been climbing the ladder. Jumping from UT to BC would be moving back down the ladder in every aspect other than Boston being home to him.)
BasketballBetting: Thinking outside the box for a bit, Tennessee Volunteer head coach Bruce Pearl was born in Massachusetts and happens to be a Boston College alum. However, after Tennessee’s first trip to the Elite Eight, it would take more than a large sum of money and a miracle to get Pearl out of Tennessee, but I don’t think Eagles fans would mind having his passion and energy leading the way.
Soaring To Glory: Dear Bruce Pearl, Has anyone told you that you’d look much better in maroon and gold? XOXO, BC Fans.
John Pennington: Since Boston College officials have already asked for permission to speak with the coaches at Cornell and Richmond, no, I don’t think Pearl is in their plans.
BCDraft: On several occasions, Pearl has stated that Boston College is his dream job. My note: Urban Meyer also said Notre Dame was his dream job. Then he spurned their offer. (Sorry, UT fans, for comparing Bruce Pearl and Corch Meyers.) (BTW, when did Pearl say BC is his dream job? Did I miss something?)
Providence Journal: Bruce Pearl has coached in Iowa, Milwaukee and now Knoxville, Tenn., but he remains a New Englander at heart… “This is where I grew up,” he said, “and I’m still a huge Red Sox fan and Patriots fan and Celtics fan and Bruins fan.” (Okay, that was actually from two weeks ago, but it’s a comment worth noting, nonetheless.)
Here’s another from a couple of weeks ago:
” I have a love and a great passion for Boston…Being at Boston College gave me the foundation. It gave the education and the foundation through being an assistant for Dr. Tom Davis to be able to learn and be able to go off on my own and be able to continue coaching college basketball.” — Boston Herald.
One plus for Tennessee? Pearl may be a New Englander at heart, but his wife is a lovely Southern Belle.
Seriously, though: On the surface, the Tennessee job outshines the BC job in just about every respect. Even the fact that the Eagles play in the ACC and could probably make a basketball-first commitment can’t match 20,000 in the Tommy Bowl and the resources that UT can throw at the basketball program.
But until BC makes it obvious that they’re looking in another direction or until Pearl releases the obligatory Statement of No Interest, never say never. Ever.
Sometimes, the face-value of the professional opportunity isn’t what matters most. Never under-estimate matters of the heart. In every walk of life, our heart will lead us where our feet otherwise wouldn’t carry us. I’ve been there. Many of us have. Whether it’s working for a weekly newspaper in a town of 3,500 or coaching college basketball in front of millions, it’s hard to resist going home.
Man vs. bird: Battle renewed
Mar 30th
Tennessee’s spring turkey hunting season opens Saturday. Droves of turkey hunters across the Volunteer State will hit their favorite wooded hills and hollers in search of gobbling longbeards.
Hunters will answer repeated five o’clock wakeup calls until the season closes May 16 to chase a bird that is lucky to weigh much over 20 lbs. soaking wet and has a brain roughly the size of a peanut.
Some hunters become so fixated on a bird that has given them the slip that they’ll spend the entire season chasing a single tom turkey. “Season-wreckers,” they call those birds, an inference to the likelihood that they’re going to come up empty-handed.
They will trudge through weather of all sorts. Spring features the most volatile weather of the year, with Mother Nature throwing everything from freezing weather to strong thunderstorms—even snow—at anyone who ventures outdoors. A turkey hunter who doesn’t have a story to tell of being caught out in a severe storm is a turkey hunter who hasn’t been hunting very long.
Not to mention the fact that spring brings about the return of chiggers and ticks, which seem hungrier than every after five months in exile.
And, if those hunters are lucky, they’ll harvest a bird. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency turkey biologist Gray Anderson says almost 80% of all turkey hunters who take to the woods harvest only one bird or no birds at all.
You can pick up a premium Honeysuckle or Butterball turkey from your favorite neighborhood grocer for $20. Or less. That turkey hunter who was fortunate enough to place a tag on one bird paid $28 just for his hunting license. That isn’t counting the $18 he paid for each supplemental tag (one for his weapon of choice, another if he hunts a wildlife management area) or his ammo. Turkey loads can be as cheap ($13 for a box of 10 Winchester premiums) or as expensive (more and more hunters are switching to $7-per-shell custom Nitro loads) as the shooter desires.
Then there’s the gas to motor himself to and from the turkey woods, not to mention the other gear. Opportunistic manufacturers release new calls every year that will make basically the same sounds that hunters blowing air through a hollow wing bone have been able to make for hundreds of years, yet most of us can’t resist picking up the latest gadget each spring. (This year’s most popular, if somewhat dubious, is M.A.D. Calls’ “hen squealer.”)
Add it all up and a typical hunter might shell out at least $200 to spend the spring locating and calling gobbling tom turkeys, only to have them hang up out of gun range and leave him throwing his camo cap to the ground in frustration and cursing his luck (“dadburn hens are the devil” is the G-rated version).
But therein lies the answer: Locating and calling gobbling tom turkeys. That’s what drives turkey hunters. Playing the game. Calling a longbeard to the gun is addictive. Putting meat on the table is simply icing on the cake.
When a classic hunt sets up—the longbeard coming to the call as if on a string, strutting and drumming all the way home—everything else ceases to matter. The $40 tank of gas, the $28 hunting license and the $7 shells are a small price to pay for a rich outdoors recreation experience.
It’s man vs. turkey in country that still belongs to God and reflects His handiwork. The fact that He filled up man’s melon-sized gourd with brains and had only a smidge left over to fill the turkeys skull doesn’t stand in the way of a thrilling hunt. Matching wits with a wild turkey is often humbling and sometimes humiliating…but always exhilarating.
That’s why they do it. That’s why they’re willing to spend the spring dodging lightning bolts and strong wind gusts and even attacking the chiggers with rubbing alcohol: for the sound of that first gobble echoing through the woods Saturday morning. And the hope that the first sight of a red-headed tom turkey strutting towards the call will soon follow.
Well this just purely stinks
Mar 30th
Michael Silence has this bit of unfortunate news: Nashville Post political blogger Adam Kleinheider has been bitten by the layoff bug at SouthComm.
It stinks because it’s a reminder that none of us who work in the news business want: None of us—not one—are safe in the current economic climate. (Of course, that could be said for almost any industry, couldn’t it?)
But it also stinks because ACK’s blog was a great source for traditional and new media types alike, as well as your every day political junkies. The Post Politics blog was one of my first stops on the innerweb each morning and drew me back repeatedly throughout the day, especially when the General Assembly is in session each spring. Often, what local representatives in Nashville were up to could be found on the blog before a phone call could be made to the rep’s office or cell phone. Simply put, if it involved politics with a Tennessee flavor, Kleinheider had it.
At the end of the day, the chief reason I enjoyed ACK’s blog so much was because I’ve been following it for years and still don’t know with certainty whether he’s a Republican or a Democrat; a conservative or a liberal. That, perhaps more than any other, is the tell-tale sign of a great journalist.
Oh well. SouthComm’s loss will be someone else’s gain. Because, as Silence says, “He’ll be back. Sooner or later, they all come back.”
Trouble for UT?
Mar 30th
Boston College has fired basketball coach Al Skinner after 14 seasons.
Boston College is Bruce Pearl’s alma mater.
Pearl is a coaching commodity, having turned down opportunities at Memphis (last year) and Iowa (this year). But many people feel that if there is any school other than one of the so-called “Big 6″ (UNC, Duke, etc.) that could lure Pearl away from Tennessee, it would be Boston College.
Besides being Pearl’s alma mater, B.C. also plays in what is widely recognized as the nation’s premier college basketball conference.
County officials, Mercy to meet
Mar 29th
Ongoing discussions between Scott County and Mercy Health officials will continue tomorrow evening, when the two groups sit down across the table for a work session at the County Office Building in Huntsville.
Mercy, which last year demanded a long-term, rent-free lease of Scott County Hospital—a demand County Commission met to avoid the risk of Mercy terminating its contract with Scott County, has reversed its stance, offering to pay $1.1 million in annual lease fees to the county in exchange for the county paying Mercy $1 million for the charity care it provides through the Scott County facility.
What Race to the Top means for Scott County
Mar 29th
Scott County Director of Schools Sharon Wilson says early estimates indicate Scott County schools will receive about $250,000 per year for four years from Tennessee’s pot of approximately $500 million Race to the Top funds.
“Cautiously optimistic” is the way Wilson described her approach to the news that Tennessee—along with Delaware—had been chosen for the first round of funding from the $34 billion federal program.
Because Tennessee was required to adopt laws and programs to implement the federal education reforms before being eligible for Race to the Top—the state legislature passed and Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the First to the Top Act in January—local school systems were going to have to implement those reforms with or without the benefit of additional federal funding. To that end, Wilson said, the funding will help, but there are still many questions that must be answered before schools can begin to implement plans for moving forward; plans that must be completed in the weeks ahead.
“It reminds me of a line from a Dickens novel I used to teach to my students: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,” Wilson said. “I, along with my colleagues, am hopeful that it will be the best of times.”
Reforms required by Race to the Top include strengthening the performance of teachers and principals (evaluations will be required yearly and salaries based on test results), turning around poorly-performing schools (schools that don’t meet standards will be removed from the jurisdiction of the school system and placed in a special school district with an independent administrative body), and new curriculum standards to better prepare students for college.
The amount of funding received by school systems will be determined by the same formula that currently determines funding through the federal Title I program (without the Title I restrictions), which means large urban schools will receive the lion’s share of the money while rural schools, by comparison, receive very little money.
Much warmer temps incoming?
Mar 28th
Ready for temperatures to push into the 80s? The National Weather Service in Nashville raises the possibility:
THESE FEATURES WILL DOMINATE THE REGION WELL INTO NEXT WEEKEND…SETTING THE STAGE FOR DRY WARMING WEATHER THRU SAT AND HIGH TEMPS IN THE 80S BY SAT.
As we posted last week, this upcoming week will feature our longest stretch of warm weather so far this season, even though there’s a threat of thunderstorms by Easter. The official forecast from NWS-Nashville calls for 78 in Jamestown on Friday, with a high of 74 on Saturday and 72 on Sunday and slight chances of rain showers or thunderstorms beginning Saturday night. The forecast from NWS-Morristown for Oneida is for temps in the mid 70s through the Easter weekend.
Model output statistics from the GFS computer model suggest 78 as a high temperature for Oneida on Friday…which would mean locations such as Knoxville and Nashville would almost certainly hit 80 degrees, if that were to prove accurate.
That’s significantly above average for the first few days of April but would be welcomed after a spring that has featured consistent below-average temperatures. Even better: some of the latest modeling data is backing off the idea of rain and storms for the weekend, which is reflected in Morristown’s forecast (dry through the weekend).
The last time Oneida hit 80 degrees, according to NWS data, was Sept. 26 last year (high: 80). The last time we hit 75 degrees was Oct. 10 last year (high: 78).
A rotten Final Four?
Mar 28th
Actually, it should be quite entertaining. How can you not root for a tiny school like Butler to complete a Cinderella run by hoisting the trophy? But some fans of a certain school to our north beg to disagree. Some excerpts from CatsPause:
“Could the winner of this possibly be the worst title winner in recent memory? When teams like Kansas, Syracuse, and Kentucky all take shockingly early exits, who is actually going to remember the winner of this?”
“Kansas, Kentucky, and Cuse all went down and were better than the rest of the field. Just a shame to see someone like Tennessee get into the final four.”
“CBS will have the worst ratings for final four ever.”
“Just who could survive because they got lucky bracketing or all the significant threats flopped and exited early. That’s what sucks. This championship will be meaningless.”
“It’s so boring with these lackluster teams left. None of them really deserve to be still playing. I really hope they go to double elimination to keep some integrity in the tournament in the years to come.”
“I would argue this is not good for the college game as the ratings will be lower and the NCAA will get less $.”
LOL. Delusional, much?
Let me see if I understand the reasoning at play here: The NCAA Tournament is meaningless because the “usual” group of teams either weren’t good enough to make the field of 64 to start with or were bumped from the tournament before the Final Four. You’re disinterested because your team isn’t in it, so the rest of the nation will not watch the Final Four either. Oh, and since your team wasn’t good enough to beat the other team, the other team’s national championship will be meaningless.
On behalf of our Kentucky friends, I would like to propose the following changes to the NCAA Tournament format:
1.) Name Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and UCLA tournament teams emeritus. Put the rest of the conference champions and at-large teams in a 64-field bracket and let them play until all but four teams are eliminated. Then interject UK, Duke, UNC and UCLA into the tournament and begin with the Elite Eight. Or,
2.) Act as though the NCAA Tournament is a video game and keep hitting the restart button until a Final Four is achieved that includes at least two of the emeritus teams.
Actually, I’ll just defer to this guy, who reminds us that some UK fans have proposed leaving the SEC for the Big Ten because the SEC doesn’t recognize that Kentucky is the only team in the league: “You guys better stop talking bad about UK. Remember, if the SEC doesn’t start putting them on a pedestal above everyone else, they’re going to bolt for the Big 10. Then we’ll miss out on all that Music City Bowl revenue they occasionally bring in.”
