July 23 Notebook
July 23, 2004 02:26 PM | General
July 23, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University senior offensive guard Jeff Berk says he has to walk a fine line when it comes to talking to his older brother Dave Berk.
Dave runs a successful Ohio prep web site that also deals with high school football recruiting. Jeff sometimes has to keep his brother at arms length because of the many NCAA rules and regulations.
“All of that stuff he does,” said Jeff. “There are times when there are kids from my high school that are good and he’ll call me but everything else … it’s all him.
“He’s a big sports nut,” Jeff said of his brother. “His thing was he wanted to do something free to help kids find schools. His philosophy was to help kids get a free education by promoting them.”
Berk says his older brother doesn’t give a ‘star-system’ like so many other recruiting services and only reluctantly rates Ohio’s top prospects, “Who’s to say that a recruit is a five-star player?” he said. “I’ve had a guy from my high school that was a five-star player go on to Ohio State and do nothing but play special teams his whole career. Then you take somebody like me who was maybe a one-star player and I’ve played all four years down here.”
Because he’s seen both sides of the business, Jeff believes fans are getting carried away with recruiting rankings.
“Say I’ve got a friend who is a sportswriter and I tell them about my son and he starts pumping him up. Even though he’s not very good he’s going to get written up and noticed by the recruiting people, he said”
Berk does admit the rating system did come into play during his recruitment at West Virginia University, “We had John Hollins and Will Allen at my high school who were both five-star recruits and went on to play at Ohio State,” he said. “When schools came in to look at them they then found out about me. Those players being rated so highly helped me get a scholarship but I think overall these rating systems are just for the fans and people can easily get carried away with it.”
So what is Berk’s solution?
“You just have to trust the evaluations of the coaches,” he said. “They, more than anyone else, understand and know the type of players they need for their system and how they will fit in.”
Notebook:
Meaning Big East teams have kind of blended the styles used by the Big Ten, the SEC and the ACC.
“The Big Ten has a lot of bigger guys like Wisconsin and Ohio State compared to the SEC and the ACC,” he said. “With the previous teams like Miami you had more speed and then you’ve got Boston College which is a lot bigger like a Big Ten team. Syracuse is probably a mixture of both.”
As for West Virginia’s style under coach Rich Rodriguez, Berk admits that “it’s probably more of a Southern style” meaning they rely on speed, athletic ability and quickness.
“I think our style fits well for this conference,” he added.
The answer is at the bottom.
The most prominent rule change this year will be the announcement of the number of the player committing a foul.
“He’s doing a good job as our hitting coach and he is narrowing down the number of batters he plunks in batting practice,” joked team media relations director Chris Tunno.
Whitmore spent parts of three seasons in the majors with the Florida Marlins and was also a member of the 1989 Fiesta Bowl team that played against Notre Dame for the national championship.
Alexander still ranks sixth on the WVU career rushing chart with 2,456 yards. He spent parts of three seasons in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams from 1981-83.
Cobourne is competing with Shawn Bryson, Olandis Gary, rookie Kevin Jones, Artose Pinner, Jeff Sanchez and Paul Smith for a spot on this year’s team.
“Everyone played great,” said Rodriguez. “We were getting a stroke on almost every hole, so if we got a birdie it became an eagle. And we had two eagles on par 5s, so they became 2s.”
Summer vacation is basically over now for Mountaineer coaches as they prepare for the arrival of the entire team for fall camp on Monday, August 9.
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| Former WVU quarterback Marc Bulger was in Charleston recently signing autographs. (All Sport photo) |
“We’ve got four bowl tie-ins and we’d like to get a fifth,” Pastilong told the Charleston Gazette Wednesday.
Bowl representatives at the meetings included the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Gator, Insight, Continental Tire, Tangerine and Motor City bowls.
He says construction on the new soccer stadium should wrap up in the middle of August, “We gave them a two-week extension because of some bad weather earlier this year,” he said.
Meanwhile, construction inside the WVU Coliseum will continue until Nov. 15.
“The first milestone for the Coliseum is when volleyball practice begins in the middle of August,” he said. “We need to have a locker room completed at that time.”
Fulmer gave information to NCAA officials investigating violations that took place at Alabama that led to the Crimson Tide being placed on probation. Apparently some Alabama fans haven’t forgotten that.
Have a great weekend!
Answer: West Virginia’s two overtime football games were against Pitt in 1997 (loss) and Rutgers in 2000 (win).
