Wednesday May 28, 2008

Ten Early Summer, Mid-Week Thoughts

Ten Early Summer, Mid-Week Thoughts
Next week on the radio show and blog we will start our position by position preview of the Tigers, Gamecocks, ACC, SEC, national college football, NFL and high school. We will begin with the quarterbacks and progress to a different unit each week.

Until then I had some thoughts and began cleaning out the notebook. So here are 10 early summer, mid-week thoughts:

1. ACC Baseball Tournament-The tournament is broken and it's time to fix it. The round robin idea is a joke, so we can begin to get back to double elimination first. The other way to fix it is the venue. I don't mind the novelty of Fenway Park for a year next year but it needs to come back to Greenville. The attendance in Jacksonville was awful and it should not be much better in Boston. Most games could not draw flies. Jacksonville cannot sell out the ACC football championship game so how can we expect them to support the baseball tournament? The ACC baseball tournament is not a big deal in Jacksonville or Boston. When it was in Greenville it was supported. Sellouts were the norm and I think it is past time to get it back where it belongs. The city of Greenville and the ACC need to get together today and make it happen.

2. Rodney Williams-Today the state legislators will vote in Clemson's newest member of the board of trustees. A few months ago, Tom Lynch resigned his position on the board and his replacement will be voted in today. Former Clemson quarterback Rodney Williams is a candidate and I am pulling for him today. Former Clemson athletes have been important members of the board and his election today would be good news.

3. Qualifying-Clemson is waiting on just a couple of guys from the past signing class. The staff feels good about the class getting qualified except for two players. I think it is best not to name either player. I also am always skeptical of the clearinghouse delaying decisions on players all across the country but the staff does not anticipate any problems except for the final two they are currently waiting on.

4. Recruiting-The staff is off of the road now and they have begun to trim down the list of potential prospects. The summer evaluations will continue and the staff will still make offers to prospects even through December in some cases. However, most of the class that will get an offer should already have one in hand. They are currently almost half way done with this class and I would expect a couple or three more commitments coming out of their summer camps. I could see Clemson having 11-14 commitments coming out of the summer. This would leave the staff with only 7-10 spots available for the rest of the class.

5. Olympic Trails-The Clemson track team has NCAA regionals and NCAA finals left in the outdoor season but a couple of Tigers already have their eyes on a bigger prize. Sprinter Travis Padgett and pole-vaulter Mitch Greeley have already qualified for the United States Olympic trials. I talked to Greeley this week and he is confident both he and Travis have a good shot at qualifying to represent our country in China at the Summer Olympics this August.

6. NCAA Golf-Clemson tees off today at the 111th NCAA Golf Championships on the campus of Purdue in West Lafayette, IN. Coach Larry Penley brought last year's runner-up Kyle Stanley along with Phillip Mollica, Sam Saunders, Ben Martin and David May to the event. The Tigers finished strong in the NCAA West Regional a couple of weeks ago and are seeded fifth at the nationals. The NCAA Championship is a 72-hole event that starts today and ends Saturday. You can follow hole-by-hole scoring at www.golfstat.com.

7. Pressure-There is a lot of positive thoughts around the Clemson football program and expectations are huge heading into the summer. I am an optimist but I am also aware of what has happened recently on the national landscape. Last year a bunch of teams had their opportunities for special years but the pressure became too much in many cases. West Virginia was the best example of this when they fell to Pittsburgh which cost the Mountaineers a shot at the national title. WVU was not alone though. Kansas and Missouri fell late. Even the two teams that eventually played for the national championship both lost at home in November. LSU lost to Arkansas and Ohio State lost to Illinois. Each year the pressure intensifies when November rolls around and only a few teams have enough talent and enough guts to survive. I think Clemson has enough talent but we won't know about the second part of the equation until the calendar turns a few more pages.

8. Camps-The Clemson staff has been very successful in recent years in terms of attracting top notch talent to its summer football camp. This is a big recruiting battle because there is so much competition and many players have limited funds and/or time each summer. You need to get the top players on your campus as often as possible and it helps to have close interaction with each player. College coaches can gain the trust of players at an unprecedented level when the players are on your campus receiving coaching from your staff for a few days. I am told that the list of players who plan on coming to Clemson this summer is ultra-impressive.

9. MLB Draft-Don't look for a raiding of the talent of the Clemson baseball roster with the upcoming MLB amateur draft. The one superstar that looks like a first round possibility in Toccoa, GA's Ethan Martin. The staff does not feel good about his Clemson future and they will have to wait to hear where a couple of other signees will be picked. D.J. Mitchell is expected to be taken in the first ten rounds so he might have a decision to make. However, there will not be a massive departure like in some years.

10. Summer School-Academics appear to be in good shape for most of the major athletes in the major sports at Clemson heading into the summer. Last year the staff new a couple of guys had to bust it to become eligible but that is not the case this season.

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