Saturday Skull Session

By Chris Lauderback on May 7, 2011 at 6:00 am
3 Comments
Valentine will still blow this call

Rise and shine devout readers of 11W as it's time for your randomly decided upon Saturday morning skull session. Hopefully you've already had a chance to scrape the crust from your eyes, slug down an ice cold can of Coke and Wagner power paint the toilet after a successful Friday night on the boozing circuit like me, or maybe you chose an intense night of Dateline instead. It's all good. We all have our guilty pleasures. I get that.

Either way, I'm glad you plodded through the empty bottles of Stella, Chimay and Colt .45 on our porch. Have a seat and let's see what's happenin' on the interwebs.

 Wait, Don't Leave Already! I know many of you have already written off hoops until after the Michigan game but there's some national news that requires your attention. Well, maybe it doesn't but since you've already sat down, stay with me. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee met earlier this week and recommended some notable rules changes that could be approved when the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel meets on June 9th at Nectar's in Burlington, Vermont.

The most important and unanimous recommendation is the permanent addition of a marked restricted area arc, similar to what you see in the NBA, stretching three feet around the hoop. The committee claims this is to increase player safety as offensive players are less likely to be injured by a defender sliding under them so close to the hoop trying to draw a charge. That certainly makes sense but with officiating at an all-time level of stink, led by grandstanders like Valentine and Hightower, providing a marked visual of where a defender's feet can't be should hopefully help the accuracy of charge/block calls which also has to be on the mind of the committee. 

Besides changing the naming convention for intentional fouls to Flagrant 1 (old "intentional" )and Flagrant 2 (old "flagrant"), the group also recommended that coaches be allowed to challenge Flagrant 2's at any time during a game. Upon official review of the replay, coaches lose a timeout if they are deemed wrong in their challenge.

The committee discussed a proposal that would've restricted head coaches from calling timeouts to only deadball instances, thus eliminating benches calling timeouts during loose ball scrums but decided to leave the current policy in place.

 Silver Bullets Locked and Loaded. Scanning the defensive side of the ball, Castel takes a look at some Silver Bullets potentially ready to blow up in 2011. Simon, Hankins and Howard are easy picks that I doubt prompt disagreement from many fans. I do like the additions of Bellamy and Roby, in particular. Johnny and I were saying last spring that Roby might be a player after he wowed us at the jersey scrimmage. As Castel notes, Roby just seemed to have a knack for making plays and stuck with receivers nicely in coverage.

I also like what I've seen from Whiting and with Bell suspended, he could emerge as a special teams lynchpin. I completely agree with the assessment of Cash, as well. It will take injuries for him to be a factor this year but he was active all spring, earning some love from Tressel, showing he's going to be a starter down the road.

Which Bullets impressed you coming out of camp?

 It's Called Looking Out For Your Players. Maybe it's my soft spot reserved for Lloyd Carr but I have absolutely no problem with him telling Ryan Mallett's dad, "If I was in that situation, with a different offense, he needs to leave" in response to a query as to whether or not Mallett should transfer from Michigan before RichRod could further set back his career. I can see where Michigan fans may not be in love with the statement but if Carr recruited the kid, I'm sure he gave his word to his parents to always look out for his best interests and if Carr felt leaving was the best move, at least he had the nuggets to say it.

I also liked how Mallet's dad got in one last jab at RichRod saying, "Ryan’s the one who called (Rich Rod). He said, “Can I talk about the offense?’ And then he told me, ‘Daddy, (Rodriguez) never looked me in the eye.’ He never visited with the family, he didn’t talk to us. I never met the man. But hey, it wasn’t a fit. Let’s move on.”

 DOJ + BCS = WTF BS. So, I'm sure you've read by now that the Hall Department of Justice wants to know why the NCAA doesn't have a college football playoff system. Like many people, I just struggle to get excited about the government spending time on this stuff. While I know I'm in the extreme minority, I'm not dying for a playoff system for college football anyway, at least not in the way of making it some gigantly grand event that enables too many unworthy teams to qualify diminishing the importance of the regular season.

Eight teams is about as far as I'm willing to go simply because there typically aren't more than that many teams that seem worthy of a chance to call themselves national champions after a 10-12 game body of work. I guess 16 could be feasible but eight is the number I prefer. I know a huge tourney works great in hoops but they play so many games there isn't such a premium on winning in the regular season except to help your seeding. In college football's current format, with so few regular season games, I like how every Saturday has such a do or die feel. With an eight team playoff you'll still get that feeling that I care so much about preserving. With 16+, that urgency starts to diminish. In the end, I'm a bit contradictory across the sports but that's just how I feel. I don't mind a Butler v. UConn in hoops so much but I prefer not to see the equivalent of that matchup in football.

 Mixtape. Mike Greenberg to follow in Cowherd's TV sitcom footsteps?...Hulk Hogan was cool back in the day...Unbelievable panoramic views of Alabama tornado damage...You know you've done it too.

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