Figured I'd share a few of the nuggets of information I heard this weekend from other people across the Rivals Network. Always fun being around a lot of people that know the ins and outs of what's going on around college football.
***The Ole Miss situation is fascinating. Our publisher from Ole Miss was actually in Chicago on draft night and asked the initial question to Tunsil about if he was interviewed by the NCAA, then another guy asked "if he took money" and Tunsil said "yes." For whatever reason Freeze and the Ole Miss staff/fans are so delusional they are blaming this Ole Miss Rivals guys for getting the ball rolling at the press conference and he's been basically black balled by them all for being Chicago that night. Makes no sense at all. I told him this will all blow over and people are just trying to find somebody to be mad at for what all went down.
The other interesting thing is after all that went down in Chicago, he said Freeze and the rest of the coaches got the heck out of there and where nowhere to be seen. An Athletic Department official also supposedly collected the cell phones of every single coach to go through their text records.
***This is an old one, but a Kansas State guy told me Wednesday Mangino at his peak was 5-foot-9, 500 pounds. I asked if he ever got the stomach surgery done and he said "he ate his way through it." Amazing the guy is still alive at that size and could even coach football.
***The other interesting thing he told me at K-State is Jerry Kill was basically brought in to assist the AD in hiring the next coach after Snyder some day. The current AD and Snyder really don't have a relationship at all and I think if Snyder had his way they would just promote his son.
***As for Big 12 expansion talk, the Big 12 seems to feel pretty good about their position. Big 12 ADs and officials have said they have two teams in the fold that nobody is even mentioning. The rumor is it's Arizona and Arizona State. There's also a scenerio where they could have some ala carte memberships such as Wichita State, etc.
***Jay Norvell is now the WR's coach at Arizona State. Tim Cassidy played a big part in making that happen is what it sounds like.
***Ohio State is the team to really worry about with Trevor Trout. Every kid in St. Louis saw what OSU did for Ezekiel Elliott and he's a legend right now to high schools kids in the St. Louis area.
***We had an NCAA rep at the convention and Rivals100 Five-Star Challenge all week. He was really cool. He actually was the director of recruiting at Maryland and worked with Brian Stewart back then. The biggest thing he said to make sure we tell fans is it's technically a violation for fans/boosters to interact with kids on Twitter and it's very important they don't involve themselves in the recruiting process.
He also thinks it would make sense for the NCAA to start allowing coaches back to the Under Armour and NIKE camps or even letting conferences run their own official scouting combines. The biggest issue the NCAA has with Satellite Camps is they are impossible to monitor and by letting high schools have highly rated prospects host camps, it's basically allowing "third parties to say you can have a camp at 5-star player X's school for $30,000" and that's basically happening. There's no way to monitor the money on these and how it's exchanging hands and what motives are involved. In general the whole recruiting calendar needs to be involved, but the power 65 schools and the "rest" cannot get on the same page because their wants/needs are different.
Figured you'd guys enjoy some of this stuff!
Thanks,
***The Ole Miss situation is fascinating. Our publisher from Ole Miss was actually in Chicago on draft night and asked the initial question to Tunsil about if he was interviewed by the NCAA, then another guy asked "if he took money" and Tunsil said "yes." For whatever reason Freeze and the Ole Miss staff/fans are so delusional they are blaming this Ole Miss Rivals guys for getting the ball rolling at the press conference and he's been basically black balled by them all for being Chicago that night. Makes no sense at all. I told him this will all blow over and people are just trying to find somebody to be mad at for what all went down.
The other interesting thing is after all that went down in Chicago, he said Freeze and the rest of the coaches got the heck out of there and where nowhere to be seen. An Athletic Department official also supposedly collected the cell phones of every single coach to go through their text records.
***This is an old one, but a Kansas State guy told me Wednesday Mangino at his peak was 5-foot-9, 500 pounds. I asked if he ever got the stomach surgery done and he said "he ate his way through it." Amazing the guy is still alive at that size and could even coach football.
***The other interesting thing he told me at K-State is Jerry Kill was basically brought in to assist the AD in hiring the next coach after Snyder some day. The current AD and Snyder really don't have a relationship at all and I think if Snyder had his way they would just promote his son.
***As for Big 12 expansion talk, the Big 12 seems to feel pretty good about their position. Big 12 ADs and officials have said they have two teams in the fold that nobody is even mentioning. The rumor is it's Arizona and Arizona State. There's also a scenerio where they could have some ala carte memberships such as Wichita State, etc.
***Jay Norvell is now the WR's coach at Arizona State. Tim Cassidy played a big part in making that happen is what it sounds like.
***Ohio State is the team to really worry about with Trevor Trout. Every kid in St. Louis saw what OSU did for Ezekiel Elliott and he's a legend right now to high schools kids in the St. Louis area.
***We had an NCAA rep at the convention and Rivals100 Five-Star Challenge all week. He was really cool. He actually was the director of recruiting at Maryland and worked with Brian Stewart back then. The biggest thing he said to make sure we tell fans is it's technically a violation for fans/boosters to interact with kids on Twitter and it's very important they don't involve themselves in the recruiting process.
He also thinks it would make sense for the NCAA to start allowing coaches back to the Under Armour and NIKE camps or even letting conferences run their own official scouting combines. The biggest issue the NCAA has with Satellite Camps is they are impossible to monitor and by letting high schools have highly rated prospects host camps, it's basically allowing "third parties to say you can have a camp at 5-star player X's school for $30,000" and that's basically happening. There's no way to monitor the money on these and how it's exchanging hands and what motives are involved. In general the whole recruiting calendar needs to be involved, but the power 65 schools and the "rest" cannot get on the same page because their wants/needs are different.
Figured you'd guys enjoy some of this stuff!
Thanks,
