Big 12 Media Day Notebook
July 18, 2017 11:40 AM | Football
FRISCO, Texas - Some Tuesday morning tidbits from the beautiful and spacious Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, Texas …
* All eyes this year are going to be on Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, handed the keys to the Big 12’s Cadillac program in stunning fashion earlier this summer when Bob Stoops announced his retirement on Wednesday, June 7.
Riley’s football background includes stops at Texas Tech and East Carolina before Stoops hired him as OU’s offensive coordinator in 2015.
Riley admitted Monday that it has been a whirlwind process for him since June.
“Tough to describe kind of all the emotions that went into that day and that decision and still a little bit of a dream to me,” Riley said. “Normally, when there’s a change in the head coaching position, so much else has changed as well as far as bringing in a new staff a lot of times, getting to know players, starting to develop those relationships.
“What made this so unique was the continuity that was kept with the decision. It’s made it definitely a lot easier on me when I think about all I’ve done in the last month,” he added.
Outside of Norman, Oklahoma, perhaps the party most interested in Riley’s future success at Oklahoma is the Big 12 Conference, which is losing its most esteemed coach in Stoops.
“Bob Stoops is not here for the first time in many, many years,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby noted. “We were together at a memorial service over the weekend and had a chance to visit a little bit, and I had an opportunity to tell him how much I have appreciated his work the last five years that I’ve been around on behalf of the sport of football.
“I think he feels very good about the timing of moving away from the game, and I think he feels very good about Lincoln Riley coming in as his successor.”
In Riley, Texas’ Tom Herman and Baylor’s Matt Rhule, Bowlsby labeled them “superstars” among the game’s top young coaches.
“I don’t think there’s a league in the country that has three better new young head coaches than Tom Herman, Matt Rhule and Lincoln Riley,” Bowlsby said.
* West Virginia has to be one of the most curious teams in the Big 12 in 2017. Several reputable football experts have the Mountaineers pegged for a top-25 finish this season, but yet the Big 12 media last week placed West Virginia sixth in the conference behind Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Texas and TCU.
Is that too low?
Is that about right?
Who knows?
I do know this. Other than 2012, when the Mountaineers were picked to finish second on the basis of returning star offensive players Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey from WVU’s Orange Bowl championship team, West Virginia has finished higher than its predicted preseason finish each year since.
Last year, the Big 12 media picked West Virginia seventh and the Mountaineers finished tied for second place with Oklahoma State.
* Big 12 coordinator of officials Walt Anderson provided another lengthy and entertaining presentation on current topics in college football rules Tuesday morning.
According to Anderson, there are not a lot of significant rule changes being implemented this year, but a major emphasis is going to be placed on sideline decorum, specifically from head coaches coming onto the field to argue a call.
Coaches who choose to come onto the field now run the risk of being penalized.
* One interesting tidbit from Anderson’s rules presentation this year: the Big 12 averaged 199.9 plays per game, or roughly 15 per game more than the national average.
Last year, Division I games averaged three hours and 24 minutes, or approximately 12 minutes longer than the average game in 2015.
* Bowlsby, a member of college football’s oversight committee, had some interesting things to say about excessive staff sizes and a possible accreditation process for college football strength and conditioning coordinators.
“There are two strength and conditioning organizations nationally and neither of them have tremendously strong certification processes,” Bowlsby said. “We don’t have any state certification on what happens with strength and conditioning coaches, what their academic preparation is, what their standards are, how often they have to be recertified and the like.
“Now, through a variety of state licensure and training programs, the sports medicine profession is more akin to a true medical specialty than it is to a sports function,” he added.
Bowlsby also touched on the composition of football staffs, which are seemingly growing every year.
“There’s one staff out there that we saw that has 197 people that are involved directly in football, and it probably isn’t who most of you think. That, in all frankness, includes students as well,” he said. “It wasn’t 10 years ago that that number would have been a third of that.
“It may not be all about what we do with numerical head counts,” he continued. “I think there’s a lot of things that we can control. We can control who’s on the sideline. We can control who’s in the press box. We can control how many headsets there are. We can control what gets done on game day, and in the end, I think that’s what coaches would tell you they want is a fair chance to compete on game day.”
* The list of players for this year’s media days includes two punters, a tight end, a fullback and lots of offensive linemen. What you see at these events today are more a reflection of the players the coaches and PR staffs feel are the best representatives of their universities, and not necessarily the top players from their schools.
* Tom Herman’s opening statement at Tuesday’s Big 12 media day has to be the longest since John Dean’s opening remarks during the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, for those of you interested.
We will have more from the Ford Center later this afternoon.
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