The State of Samford Basketball

Early success was not enough for Tillette

Samford's recently fired coach, Jimmy Tillette after 15 seasons at the university. While at the helm, Coach T led the Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament in 1999 and 2000, recoreded 229 wins, and by all accounts he ran a squeaky clean program.

Tillette experienced no problems with the NCAA in his recruiting or a pay-for-play scheme. He handled the death of one of his grittiest players--and the campus' favorite --three-year letterman Jim Griffin, with grace and class. His students graduated and served in the community. However, in the ever-competitive world of mid-major basketball, Coach T's good could not outweigh the program's decline on the court.

Along with his 229 wins, the school's winningest coach lost 219 games, a win percentage of 51 percent--the number 229 is not as impressive now. Those losses began to stack up towards the end of Tillette's tenure at Samford. This season included a 11-19 mark, the team's sixth straight year with a sub-.500 record. Mediocrity should not be tolerated in any profession. Ask former Illionois coach Bruce Weber who took his school to the national championship game in 2005 and, like Tillette was fired this year.

Luckily, the Samford athletic program has recently handed over management to the former head of basketball operations at the University of Kentucky, Martin Newton.  It is by no accident that Samford President Andrew Westmoreland hired the Samford alum, who has basketball knowledge and tremendous connections. Newton held most of the interviews for the new coach AT THE FINAL FOUR, for goodness sake!

Newton and Westmoreland are well aware that Samford possesses some of the finest facilities around for a small school. The basketball program will attempt to emulate the Gonzagas, Belmonts, and Davidsons of the world to get Samford back to the dance in March. The duo also knows that with a concentrated effort to raise the basketball standards will take a formidable effort, but it could return huge dividends for the school as a whole, not just the athletic department.

Martin (right) made history by hiring Seltzer, the
first black coach in any sport at Samford.

There is no doubt this will be a tough task. As any diehard Bulldog fan will tell you, academics are much more of a priority than athletics (though I have heard from current students this attitude is starting to change). There is a winning tradition, but alums my age were around to experience it. And finally... JanTerm: the bane of a rowdy basketball crowd, or any crowd to speak of, during the month of January.

Sure, as any school in the South dreams, it would be fun to have football as the staple of the athletic program, but the Bulldogs could become the fourth best football team in the state at best. The past three BCS National Championship teams have come not even two hours from Birmingham. Not to mention a UAB program which has seen its better days, but is a Division I school in all sports in Conference USA, nonetheless.

Lets be honest Bulldog fans, the football program is on the up-and-up with a former Heisman trophy winner leading the way. Now it is time focus our attention towards basketball.

Newton hired Bennie Seltzer who has served as the top assistant on Tom Crean's staff at the University of Indiana and Marquette University. Seltzer has learned from Crean how to build a program. Crean inherited a depleted Hoosier team coming off of NCAA sanctions in 2008, and led his team to the Sweet 16 before being bumped out in the most entertaining game of the tournament by eventual champion Kentucky.

I still dream of a packed Pete Hanna. Except in my dreams my
 favorite player makes the shot that would have sent the game to overtime.

Do any of you remember that magical Saturday afternoon when 5,116 of us joined in record fashion to watch our beloved Bulldogs take on Stephen Curry and Davison? The original White-Out game? What if that was real life and every basketball game was like that dream in 2010? Hopefully, thanks to foresight from Westmoreland and Newton, that day is soon.




NOTE: This is my 100th post. Thanks to all of you for reading my posts (or at least looking at the pictures) and providing feedback. Here's to 100 more. Cheers

I Was Wrong. You Were Right, Jeff Long

If it is not too much to ask, I would like to rescind my last blog post. Try and watch the first 7 minutes and 50 seconds of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long’s press conference after firing former Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino and tell me Long does not care about the university and its students. Even when answering the press’ questions he demonstrates his passion as the leader of the Arkansas athletic program. 

Long got it right on Tuesday night

As proven through his decision-making, Long truly has the Razorback student-athletes as his number one priority. Long owned this press conference and has received nationwide praise for his excellence in this tough choice.

My original thoughts were full of frustration. Frustrated as to why Long would fire Petrino, who led the Hogs to unprecedented success on the gridiron, because of a personal matter. I expressed my disinterest in letting Petrino go in my previous blog post, but as more details come out about the situation with Jessica Dorell, it is easier to see that Long acted with the appropriate decision.

I was lucky enough to have a church league softball game to take my mind off of the situation, along with a condolence call from my mother to make sure I was ok after the termination of the Razorbacks most successful coach in the BCS era. After the game, I came back to see Twitter beaming with praise of Long and his delivery of the news in his press conference. Once I watched the presser in its entirety, I was proud of Long and even more to be an Arkansas Razorback fan.

Long knows that his actions very well may lead to the end of his tenure as the University of Arkansas Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics. Everyone in the South knows: as the football team goes, so goes the athletic department, which made the firing of Petrino especially difficult for Long, who became emotional to the point of tears when discussing his decision. He knows Petrino brought immeasurable amounts of interest to the Razorbacks and millions of dollars to the program. Long realizes that unless the Arkansas football can reach these heights again, he may be gone after a few mediocre seasons.

The Razorback nation must remember that Long has made big hires before and has been commended by many columnists for paying big sport coaches high-dollar (Mike Anderson for Men’s basketball being the other). Long will try to bring in a character of high morals and a winning pedigree. There is no one else I would have making these decisions based on the quality Long expects and his own high character. He has proven time and time again that he will do the right thing.

The most significant message from Long’s press conference was a line at 7:19 in the video below. He said, “No one person is bigger than the team.” He proved this true in his decision to terminate Petrino, who began to think he was bigger than Arkansas football  and became an insufficient role model for Arkansas’ athletes. This powerful message should be placed on a plaque somewhere in the new football complex.

Be Smart Jeff Long, Keep Petrino

Many problems remain for Petrino

As Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel put it in on Twitter last week: Love image of Petrino, stuck at home due to "administrative leave", banged up and in pain. "Honey, can you get my pain meds?" "No"

No matter how tough last week was for you, I will go out on a limb and bet that Arkansas Razorback football coach Bobby Petrino's was a little worse. Petrino is posted up on his recliner at home, bruised and scraped from from skidding on asphalt, banned from going to work, and trying to explain to his wife and kids why a 25-year-old graduate assistant was joyriding with him on his motorcycle through the northwest Arkansas Ozarks.

Until last week when he admitted an "inappropriate relationship" with Jessica Dorrell, whom Petrino hired to help with recruiting, Razorback fans were convinced he had been on a Sunday ride and Dorell needed a ride to church. Petrino being the strong-moralled, God-fearing man he is tried to help his new employee with a ride to church and crashed. We now know his reasoning may have been a far cry from the previously proposed version.

Petrino's asphalt-ridden face with nice product
placement from his BCS berth.

Hopefully at this point you realize the Sunday School theory was mentioned in jest. As any Arkansas fan knew before last week, Bobby Petrino was not hired because he is a good man, always looking to do the right thing. He has a history of cheating. First he cheated on Louisville with Auburn, then Atlanta with Arkansas, and now his wife with an employee. (It is important to note Bobby has not been in trouble for cheating with the NCAAs.) Arkansas Athletic Director has plenty of just evidence to fire Petrino because the play-caller broke his contract's moral clause. However, if Long has his head on straight, and he has proven he does as an AD, he will not fire Bobby Petrino.

It is pretty simple. Petrino has brought Arkansas to heights it has not seen since the 1960s, when it won its last national championship. The current Razorback job is not a top-10 job, but because of Petrino's work they have a top-10 team with a top-10 college football coach. His record is 21-5 in the past two seasons. He has earned two bowl game victories, a berth in a BCS bowl, and earned a season-ending ranking of No. 5 since arriving in Fayetteville four years ago. With his success, Petrino has effectively brought in millions of dollars to the university.

If Petrino was coming off of 7-5 and 8-4 seasons with a Liberty Bowl win, he likely would be gone, but he did not. He has won and become the most well-liked coach in Arkansas since Frank Broyles was calling the shots on the field. More so, Long has to realize with Petrino and the talent currently assembled on the Razorback squad, they are a legitimate contender to raise the crystal football and dance around in confetti at the end of the season.

I will go ahead and set the odds of Petrino coaching at Arkansas at 5/21; that is how much confidence I have in Long. If you are a fan of the band Old Crow Medicine Show or songs that make light of a situation enjoy this gem.

We All Are Wrong, Yet We Continue to Try...

Every year millions of my Americans complete an enjoyable process, in which we write team names in series of lines and boxes. Then we sit back and watch in angst as 18-22 year old men play a child's game in which they try to throw an orange ball into a metal circle that is suspended ten feet above ground more times than the other team does for 40 minutes.  Many Americans like to think they have the correct combination of teams to create a perfect bracket, though the actual odds of that happening are 1-in-100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. For those of you who were not math whizzes, that is 1-in-100 million trillion.

International affairs come in second place to March Madness.
Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

But not me. No, filling out the bracket is a miserable process. I overthink lay-up picks and underthink the halfcourt shots. I become enamored with a team solely because every one in my bracket pools and the experts have a popular choice. Instead of picking a mid-major like VCU, Butler or George Mason that completes their Final Four journey, my dark horse pick is usually gone by the end of the first weekend. It is a agonizing process to fill out my bracket every year, which is why I limit myself to only one bracket--as you should to if you have any integrity. 

I like to think I know basketball. I do my homework, and follow it closely (though I rarely write about it), but there is no way to know what team will go on to the next round in a single-elimination tournament like the NCAA Tournament. It is because said zaniness and no-sense order that those like myself, who pay attention to the game, are just as lost as everyone else from from the middle of March to early April in the realm of college basketball.

John Calipari's Kentucky team is the early favorite, but we all know what
that means... nothing.

So here's to you casual fan who will win the office pool because you picked Loyola (Md.) because you picked the team that would win if the mascots raced that a greyhound would dominate the competition. And to you casual fan who wins a lump sum of money between old college friends because you had a Wichita State-St. Louis-Harvard-Purdue Final Four because you had no idea what a Shocker, Billeken, Crimson or Boilermaker is or does. 

Here is my bracket, open to humiliation for all of the world to see. I know my picks are bad and do not be afraid to call me out on them if you please. Regardless of how you came to your Final Four, it has to be more correct than mine, thus closer to that 1-in-100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

A Bounty-Full of Problems in New Orleans

On Friday, the NFL released a 50,000 page document with details of a bounty system the New Orleans Saints had in place under former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. In the last three years under the system, Saints players were paid bounties to knock opponents out of the game and for difference-making plays. As many as 27 defensive players were involved in the bounty pool, which reached a top value of $50,000. Players were rendered a $1,500 reward for knocking an opposing player unconscious, $1,000 if an opponent was carted off the field and a $10,000 bonus was promised from starting middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma if one of his teammates could knock Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre out of the 2010 NFC Championship. Williams also used his bounty system in Washington and Buffalo, where he was the defensive coordinator and head coach, respectively.

 Gregg Williams (center) and Johnathan Vilma (left)

Sadly, NFL players around the league have publicly shared how the Saints' "pay-for-pain" is not the only like system in pro football. Many players have come forward and explained on radio and written interviews how teams use monetary incentives to boost players on-field performance.

Former players Mike Golic and Darren Woodson on ESPN's Mike and Mike radio show tried to make the case that paying their colleagues a few hundred dollars for taking out the opponent's top players was essentially the same as high school or college players being given the increasingly popular helmet stickers for good play. One enormous flaw in this argument is that the stickers are given for good on-field play: a sack, interception or touchdown; but there are no schools that celebrate injuring players on the opposite team by adding a sticker to a kid's helmet. Nor are the student-athletes payed by the high school or university for ending an opponent's game, season or career.

Junior Galette making a little extra cash at the expense of Brett Favre.

In regards to rewarding positive play on the field with cash compensation in the NFL, go for it. They are professionals, whose job it is to win football games. Coordinators and head coaches alike, feel free to use the monetary motivation to inspire positive play for your team, but do not use money as incentive to injure opposing player. It is despicable--from the 1998 Atmore, Alabama's Little League Sportsmanship Award winner for the Yankees, yours truly. I have the backing of Super Bowl two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, who told the Washington Post, "it can't be a part of football."

As for the involved parties of "Bounty-Gate," they can expect steep--and deserved--repercussions from the league's office and Commissioner Roger Goodell, who have placed an added importance on player safety. Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman said in an interview a few weeks ago that the NFL would become too violent, as the American public will eventually lose interest a la boxing. America's most popular sport is seems far from extinction, but as players become bigger, faster, and stronger behavior such as that demonstrated by the Saints can not be tolerated if the NFL wishes to remain on top.