By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com
August 16, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Some random thoughts and musings as our sleepy little college town prepares to wake up next week when 25,000-plus students return for the fall semester.
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Pacman Jones, pictured here with Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher, has agreed in principle to a contract and is expected to be in camp Tuesday.
Tennessee Titans photo |
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According to ESPN.com, Tennessee Titan first-round pick Pacman Jones has agreed in principle to a contract for the 2005 season. Jones was the sixth player taken in the draft and was the first West Virginia University football player taken in the first round since tight end Anthony Becht in 2000.
Former West Virginia University football player Tim Newsom was recently named head football coach at Cheyney University located in Cheyney, Pa. Newsom played for former coach Don Nehlen from 1988-92. He spent the last seven seasons serving as defensive coordinator at John C. Smith College.
Nehlen will be in Columbus for the Kirk Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge on Friday, Sept. 9. This year’s game will pit Texas 5A Division I state champion Robert E. Lee of Tyler, Texas, against Ohio Division I state champion Colerain High School of Cincinnati. The game will be televised nationally on ESPNU.
WVU wrestling coach Craig Turnbull is recovering nicely from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident on Friday Aug. 5. Turnbull suffered a broken jaw and had severe lacerations after hitting a Chevy Suburban. He was bicycling with three-time NCAA champion Greg Jones.
“I’m very lucky to be alive,” said Turnbull.
Football season tickets sales are approaching 31,000 and there is still a chance that West Virginia could sell 32,000 before the season opener against Wofford on Saturday, Sept. 10.
Congratulations to former West Virginia University sports publications director Kevin Keys for landing his new job as assistant athletic director for marketing at Liberty University. Keys is a Liberty graduate.
WVU women’s soccer publicist Lainie Guiddy informs me that since 2001, Coach Nikki Izzo-Brown’s Mountaineers have the ninth-best winning percentage of any program in the country. West Virginia is 65-18-4 during that span. It is also the second-best record in the Big East to Notre Dame.
Patrick Beilein and Darris Nichols finished their tour of Italy and Switzerland with wins over an Italian club team (124-42) and a Belgian club team (79-75). The all-star team went 3-1 for the tour.
Beilein scored 21 points and made five of 12 three-pointers in the first game, and added 15 points in the second. Nichols had six points against the Italians and four against the Belgians.
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West Virginia's Patrick Beilein and Darris Nichols pictured with coach John Mahoney during their tour of Italy.
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Speaking of WVU basketball, did you happen to catch the page-one spread on Kevin Pittsnogle that appeared in last Wednesday’s USA Today?
According to CBS SportsLine.com senior writer Dennis Dodd, West Virginia is “quite a drop off” after Louisville and Pitt in the Big East this year.
Out of curiosity, when did basketballs and footballs begin being referred to as “rocks?” I’m guessing the late 80s or early 90s.
Is it just me or has Coach Rod been in a pretty good mood so far this fall?
There are some minor changes in store for both West Virginia’s online team shop and streaming subscription service and announcements on the two are forthcoming.
Stay tuned.
P.J. Brown, a graduate assistant coach on John Beilein’s staff two years ago, recently landed an assistant coaching position at Furman, and Josh Merkel has joined Jeff Neubauer's Eastern Kentucky staff, adding yet two more branches to John Beilein’s growing coaching tree.
Syracuse has already sold about 25,000 season tickets and more than 35,000 tickets for its season opener against West Virginia on Sunday, Sept. 4, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. The school is about 2,000 season tickets ahead of last year’s pace.
A Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently voted 3-2 to make public the salaries of Penn State athletic officials, including coach Joe Paterno, after a suit was filed by the Harrisburg Patriot.
The school plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court, arguing that none of Paterno’s salary is paid by state taxpayers.
As a periodic Mountaineer Message board observer, here are my top-five favorite message board handles: EERelevant, EEResistable, EERs 3:16, errmarked and In Rod We Trust.
There are certainly some clever Mountaineer fans out there.
And now, way off topic:
With gas now approaching three bucks a gallon, I’m considering having a cab drop me off in front of the blue gate every morning before work.
I was listening to the show “Totally Seventies” on my SIRIUS satellite radio heading into town this morning when on came the song “Muskrat Love” by Captain and Tennille. Let me tell you, nothing gets you prepared for tackling Tuesday’s problems like a little Muskrat Love!
In fact, I nearly wrecked the car twice.
I know pop music today is awful but how does a song like “Muskrat Love” ever make it to the radio? Somebody somewhere missed that one.
Think about the seventies for a minute: at what other point in time could you listen to Dolly Parton, The Spinners, Neil Diamond, Jethro Tull, The O’Jays, C.W. McCall, Aerosmith, The Commodores, AC/DC and Frankie Valli on the same radio station?
Talk about diversification.
I’m not sure what this means, but my two-year-old son takes his whiffle ball bat to bed with him every night and kisses it in the morning when he wakes up. I keep telling my wife that that is how Babe Ruth got started -- not Rafael Palmeiro.
I have never been a big fan of professional basketball and watching Stephen A. Smith on ESPN has pushed me even farther away from the sport. Television is really becoming painful to watch.
The same goes for Skip Bayless and Woody Paige – the Tucker Carlsons of sports.
Keith Olbermann doing hard news probably means news can’t be that hard, right? I put Robin Roberts and Hannah Storm in the same category. I wonder what old Edward R. Murrow would think of this.
Does anyone really think that Tiger Woods drives a $19,000 Buick?
Lithuania winning the Under-21 World Championships and the United States finishing fifth proves that you don’t have to have high-flying, rim-shattering dunkers to play winning basketball. Perhaps John Beilein, Bobby Knight, Mike Brey, Ben Howland and all of those guys who believe in sharing the basketball are on to something.
Maybe I should just send this year’s Under-21 results to the next person that emails me asking why West Virginia doesn’t recruit more “athletic types” in basketball.
Question: How long does it take a manager to get 100 games below .500? Answer: Four and a half years if you’re managing the Pirates. Lloyd McClendon’s record is 332-432 heading into Tuesday night’s game against the New York Mets.
As a long-time suffering Pittsburgh Pirate fan, I can still see Sid Bream carrying a piano around third base and Barry Bonds six-hopping the ball to Mike LaValliere in the Pirates’ 1992 NLCS loss to the Braves. And at the time I thought it couldn’t get any worse … little did I know.
Have a great week!
