Campus Connection: Busy Decembers
December 11, 2014 11:30 AM | General
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| Kevin White answers questions during a media session earlier today down at Walt Disney World Resort. |
| ESPN Images |
Busy, busy these Decembers are becoming for college football players and coaches.
The regular season concluded two weekends ago in Ames, Iowa with West Virginia getting back on the right side of the score column to finish 7-5, and now the Mountaineers are beginning initial preparation for their December 29 matchup against Texas A&M in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee (defensive coordinator Tony Gibson told me this morning he’s got four games already broken down as of Thursday morning).
A small group of WVU administrators flew down to Memphis earlier this week to review hotel accommodations and practice facilities in advance of the team’s expected Christmas Day departure to Memphis.
In the meantime, wide receiver Kevin White and place kicker Josh Lambert will be doing some hardware shopping down in Lake Buena Vista, Florida at the Walt Disney World Resort during tonight’s Home Depot College Football Awards Show airing at 7 p.m. on ESPN (you can keep up with today's happenings on Mountaineer football official twitter account).
White is up for the Biletnikoff Award presented to college football’s top wide receiver while Lambert is one of three finalists for the Lou Groza Award given to the game’s top kicker.
However, Alabama’s Amari Cooper is a heavy favorite to win the Biletnikoff Award while Florida State’s Robert Aguayo is looking to join former Seminole Sebastian Janikowski as the only two repeat winners of the award. Aguayo won it last year.
Football sports information director Mike Montoro and assistant coaches Lonnie Galloway and Joe DeForest are also down in Orlando to take in tonight’s black-tie get together.
* Yesterday, White was named to the CBS Sports College Football All-America first team while Lambert was recognized as a second team member: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/eye-on-college-football/24879398/cbs-sports-college-football-all-america-team.
White has a real shot of becoming West Virginia’s 12th consensus All-American and the first since 2006 when Steve Slaton and Dan Mozes were both honored.
Tavon Austin should have been consensus No. 12 two years ago in 2012, but he got edged out on a technicality, the award going to Kent State’s Dri Archer instead because Austin was not recognized as a specialist on all of the All-American first teams that he made that year.
* Speaking of Austin, he’s had a much more productive sophomore season for the St. Louis Rams, the Baltimore native earning NFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors following his performance last Sunday in Washington that saw him return a punt 78 yards for a touchdown and produce two other punt returns covering a distance of more than 25 yards.
Austin hasn’t done much as a pass catcher with just 26 receptions for 200 yards, but he does show two rushing touchdowns and ranks second in the NFL with 332 punt return yards.
Ram teammate Stedman Bailey is also becoming much more involved in the passing game this year. The former Mountaineer is fourth on the team in receptions with 31 for 322 yards and a touchdown. Stedman’s biggest game to date came two weeks ago when he caught six passes for 100 yards in St. Louis’ 52-0 win over Oakland.
My thanks to former Mountaineer golfer Jim Hess, now living in the St. Louis area and a big Rams supporter, for the Tavon-Stedman tips.
* You can find all of the information you need on this year's AutoZone Liberty Bowl right here: http://www.wvusports.com/2014LibertyBowl.cfm
* While some of the West Virginia coaches are out on the road recruiting ahead of the December 17 mid-year junior college transfer signing period that lasts until January 15, Mountaineer coach Dana Holgorsen hits the pause button on his busy recruiting calendar to fly down to Memphis with Associate Athletic Director Michael Fragale and top football administrator Alex Hammond to take part in today’s AutoZone Liberty Bowl news conference at the Memphis Hilton at 5:30 p.m. ET.
An audio version of that presser will be made available on our website sometime later this evening, courtesy of our great friends at IMG.
* Harley King, West Virginia’s Director of Compliance in charge of signing off on this year’s football recruiting class, says the mid-year signing period, which begins on Wednesday, December 17, is for mid-year junior college transfers signing national letters of intent (NLIs) with the intention of enrolling for the spring 2015 semester and participating in spring football. High school prospective student-athletes who graduate early can also sign and enroll for the spring 2015 semester, but they are only signing a grant-in-aid because they are not eligible to sign an NLI at this time. The football regular NLI signing period begins February 4, 2015.
West Virginia is expected to bring in a handful of mid-year guys, I am told.
* Look for the lunatic fringe to take over your favorite Internet message board now that the regular season has ended. A popular topic right now, of course, is Big 12 expansion (there are close to 100 new entries today when you do a Google search for “Big 12 expansion rumors”) and simply put, most of what little I have read defies logic.
Big 12 boss Bob Bowslby is on record stating that the Big 12 won’t expand simply to have a football championship game, but that hasn’t stopped expansion theories and suggestions from popping up all over the place, from Tampa to Cincinnati to Provo, Utah.
Thankfully a certain university located on the banks of the Monongahela is not a part of that deal.
* WVU Varsity Club director and multimedia entertainment extraordinaire Dale Wolfley is seeking out members of the 1964 Liberty Bowl for this year’s game in Memphis.
This is the 50th anniversary of West Virginia’s first appearance in the Liberty Bowl that was played indoors at the Atlantic City Convention Center on December 19, 1964 (I will have a look back at that game on Saturday morning).
Sadly, many key members of that Mountaineer team are now deceased, including quarterback Allen McCune and fullback Dick Leftridge.
* WVU Director of Athletics Oliver Luck, a member of the college football playoff committee, makes some important points about the college football playoff system in a recent Bob Hertzel column.
Specifically, Luck believes it’s not so much the lack of a championship game that shut the door on the Big 12 in its quest to get one or two teams in this year’s four-team playoff, but rather the opportunity for other teams in contention for a playoff spot to have a 13th opportunity to make their case, or in his words another “platform” to add to their resume.
That additional platform certainly helped Ohio State’s cause, that’s for sure.
You can read Bob’s full column here: http://www.timeswv.com/sports/hertzel-column-big-title-game-not-the-only-option/article_8c993c68-810f-11e4-b3d1-8ba405312700.html
Enjoy your weekend.
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