Flipping the Field: Media day questions that must be asked
Welcome to the summertime edition of Flipping The Field, that most important rendition of the column that tells us we can also flip that most important page of the calendar, the one that gets us into July. What makes July so important? It's the last lone sheet of paper on the family refrigerator that separates us from August and the start of the 2016 college football season.
Before we get started, I want to make a promise to you. Henceforth I do solemnly swear not to write anything in this space today concerning satellite camps. I enjoy the debate over the usefulness of satellite camps almost as much as I enjoy conversations about the greatness of "Batman v Superman." Whenever someone wants to start talking about satellite camps, I get the same feeling that I do when my dentist insists on asking questions about North Carolina'sElijah Hood while I have half-dozen instruments crammed into my mouth.
In other words, I don't care for it. In fact, from here on out, every time I mention satellite camps, I am going to poke myself with a sewing needle.
I think satellite camps (ouch!) are the most manufactured college football controversy since the ACC was going to be broken up and absorbed into the Big East. Remember that? No? Well then, how about the "We have to stop these up-tempo offenses before someone dies!" screams from Tuscaloosa -- while the Crimson Tide were in process of installing a few dozen pages of up-tempo plays and preparing to hire Lane Kiffin?
You see, I remember those supposed earth-altering issues because I had to ask about them. Just as this year I will be forced to ask about satellite camps. (Ouch!) I have spent the majority of my adult Julys attending the final pre-fall rites of passage known as college football media days.
They are awesome because we are talking football. But they can also get old quickly because there's only so much football to talk about before the actual football starts seven-ish weeks from now.
This year's gauntlet starts Monday in Hoover, Alabama, with the SEC's four-day marathon, and it continues through the end of the month, from the Pac-12 (July 14-15) to the Big 12 (July 18-19) to the ACC (July 21-22) to the Big Ten (July 25-26). The Group of 5 conferences will be sprinkled in between all the way into early August.
There will be smart questions asked that we already know will not be answered, such as: "Coach Miles, are you really over all of that from last November? You can't be, right?"
There will be dumb questions that we already know will draw a roll of the eyes and then will be answered politely yet half-mockingly, such as: "Coach Freeze, do you think Alabama will be good this year?"
There will be bizarre questions, asked to complete some sort of weird feature that a reporter is working on that no one else will see for another month, such as: "Coach Holgorsen, when you come to Fort Worth for games, where do you buy your cowboy boots?"
And there will be those questions that we don't want to ask, but we have to ask because they are the topic du jour, and if we don't ask then we'll be knocked for not asking them, such as: "So, Coach Fisher, do you regret not doing any satellite camps?" (Ouch!)
"Media days have changed a lot over the years, but they also haven't," says Duke coach David Cutcliffe, who will attend his ninth ACC Kickoff, always a casually chill affair.
This came after seven years at Ole Miss and seven trips to the then-ballooning SEC media days.
"The number of media members has increased significantly, and the types of media outlets have changed even more," Cutcliffe said. "It used to be a few guys with notebooks scribbling, and now it's a table piled up with GoPros and smartphones, and there's blogs and new cable channels every year. With all of that there's a pretty wide variety of questions. But we do still end up answering the same handful of questions over and over again."
I feel your pain, Coach Cut. However, there are five questions that absolutely, positively have to be asked over the next month, repetitive or not. I'm not saying we'll get answers. Honestly, we rarely ever do. But we should fire them off anyway.
1. Commissioner Bowlsby, can we see your cellphone records?
No, I don't think Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is up to anything sneaky -- well, except for the whole "We aren't expanding any time soon" thing. But wouldn't it be fun to sift through his phone bill and see how many calls he's had to field from the area codes of 801/385 (Provo, Utah), 513 (Cincinnati) and 832 (Houston) -- or another we haven't even thought of?
2. Coach Shaw, will Christian McCaffrey get 500 touches this fall?
Actually, I already asked him this one when I visited Stanford during spring practice while reporting this story.Shaw just grinned, and despite acknowledging that he had no idea who his quarterback might be, admitted, "It is pretty fun to figure as many ways to get the ball into his hands as possible." One year ago McCaffrey had 437 touches -- rushing, receiving, returning and throwing three passes (two for touchdowns). The Cardinal have no lack of talent around and behind McCaffrey at running back, but don't underestimate the power of a slow-cooked grudge. Shaw has never been shy about his bitterness over his No. 5's finishing No. 2 in the Heisman Trophy voting despite setting an NCAA record for all-purpose yards (3,864).
3. Coach Saban, are you really going to start Cam Robinson against USC?
Yeah, yeah, the charges of possession of a stolen firearm and marijuana were dropped, but that didn't stop the school from sending its preseason all-everything left tackle to drug counseling and firearm-safety classes. Will Saban send a larger message by making his largest lineman sit out what might be Week 1's largest game?
4. Coach Swinney, you came within minutes of winning a national title, your quarterback nearly won the Heisman and your longtime frustrated fan base is strutting its stuff like it's 1981 all over again. How do you keep this train onward, upward and still on the rails?
The always-outspoken Clemson head coach went uncharacteristically quiet nearly as soon spring practice ended. That wasn't an accident. The 46-year-old is beginning to toe the line between being the face of the program and becoming bigger than the program itself. He doesn't want that to happen. That's a balance he'll have to find throughout the entire program, from his well-paid staff to his well-decorated roster. It's one thing to ascend the mountain when it's about making history. It's another thing to keep climbing when the peak is right in front of you.
5. Coach Meyer, after having a dozen players drafted by the NFL, are you totally digging that everyone seems to be talking about every other big program's College Football Playoff changes except for yours?
Because, well, look at him. He kind of looks like he is, doesn't he?
6. Coach Harbaugh, after all of that, was it worth it to hold all those satellite camps?
Ouch!
OK, enough of this pain. I'm kind of starting to like it.
'We're going streaking!'Another annual tradition of media days is for fans of non-SEC schools to complain about the attention that those SEC schools receive. So, knowing that's unavoidable, allow me to go ahead and pour kerosene onto the flames. Our pals at ESPN Stats & Info have already sent along a stack of statistics that you're likely to hear trumpeted out of Hoover this week. The SEC has produced eight of the past 10 national champions, five of the past nine Heisman Trophy winners and the most first-round NFL draft picks in six of past eight years (72 first-round picks in that span; no other conference has more than 39).
Rebuild? No. Reload? Yes: And just in case those same gripers don't understand why there is cause for so much preseason optimism for SEC teams, consider this. The conference has five former 1,000-yard rushers returning in Leonard Fournette (LSU), Jalen Hurd (Tennessee), Nick Chubb and Sony Michel (Georgia) and Ralph Webb (Vanderbilt). Add that to a 3,000-yard passer --Chad Kelly of Ole Miss -- and five players who totaled at least 10 sacks last year --Myles Garrett of Texas A&M, Jonathan Allen and Tim Williams of Alabama, Marquis Haynes of Ole Miss and Tennessee's Derek Barnett-- and, well, you get the idea, right? That's a lot of talent coming back for more after being part of the first nine-win bowl season for any conference.
The Tommy West coach's news conference of the week: July 1 was a big day for the folks at Under Armour. OK, so it wasn't a news conference. And the guy is no longer a coach. But who doesn't love Barry Alvarez putting on his best Nature Boy strut? Also on July 1, mere hours after winning the College World Series, Coastal Carolina's long-signed contract with UA kicked in. Talk about timing! There wasn't enough time to give the suddenly big-time Chanticleers a big-time launch, but up at Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium, the Badgers' new apparel deal blasted off via the WWE hype manual.
The guys you should know about but probably don't: If you aren't following the Minnesota Golden Gophers special-teams guys on Twitter (@MinnSpecialists), you're doing it wrong. I have watched their Dude Perfect-ish trick kicks from June maybe 50 times. And their latest post is the perfect encapsulation of how we all feel right about now: The season can't get here fast enough.
The media days you should be psyched for but probably aren't: American Athletic Conference. The final round of media days will be the AAC's Rhode Island clambake over the first two days of August. Is the conference expected to have a trio of potential playoff busters again this year? No. But it wasn't last year, either. At any rate, Houston coach Tom Herman will be there, and that makes it worth keeping an eye on. You remember Coach Herman, right?
The news you are psyched for and should be, but you might need to pump the brakes on: When it was announced last week that Michigan and Notre Dame will renew their rivalry in 2018-19, there was much cheering heard throughout the Midwest, not to mention everywhere else in the college football world. But will it expand past those two years? Most certainly hope so. (Well, except Arkansas, which just had a contract with Michigan shredded.) But finding a place to put that piece of the scheduling puzzle might be tough. The Wolverines already have some giant names lined up all the way through the late 2020s, foes such as Virginia Tech, UCLA, Washington, Texas and Oklahoma. And Notre Dame certainly doesn't have the calendar flexibility that it once did thanks to its ACC arrangement. In the end, I guess we should just be happy to get what we can from a game that was played nearly every year from 1978 to 2014. But it's OK to want more of what we grew up with, right? Are you listening, Texas and Texas A&M?
Extra point: On Thursday at 7 p.m. ET the University of Tennessee will host a Celebration of Life ceremony for Pat Summitt at Thompson-Boling Arena, a facility that was built atop her shoulders. You can watch on the ESPN2 or SEC Network or join me on ESPN Radio as we listen to and tell stories about Coach Summitt. There have been so many amazing recollections since the legendary coach passed away on June 28, many told from some unexpected sources, a testament to her transcendence of the sport she loved. I've told a few of my own from my time there as a student, which just happened to coincide with perhaps the greatest stretch of success the Lady Vols basketball program ever experienced. I was always struck by the close relationship that Summitt had with the other on-campus coaching legend, then-football coach Johnny Majors. I can't begin to recall all of the times I heard Majors gush over Summitt's approach to the job. He once told me how he used to love to go sit in on her practices. On the day she died, Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times wrote about that respect after talking with Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden, who worked at Tennessee as a graduate assistant coach in the mid-1980s.
Said Gruden to Auman: "Johnny Majors told us GAs: 'Look, if you're not the best teacher on campus, I don't want you on our staff.' ... Then he'd say, 'If you want to see the best teacher on campus, just go across the street.' When I first got there, I didn't know who he was talking about. It was Pat Summitt. ... So we went and watched the Lady Vols at practice. Now I was once a ball boy for Bobby Knight at Indiana. I thought Bobby Knight was in a class by himself. But when you talk about a person, a teacher that had that kind of knowledge, respect, enthusiasm and fire, that was Pat Summitt. Women's basketball is where it is today because of her and what she accomplished with that program. She made a real impression on me and certainly so many others. My prayers are with her family today."
