Why is post titled Wite out? Not because of some now-unoriginal gimmick, fortunately. Wite Out only because I didn’t want to use “News & Notes” again and my handy bottle of quick dry correction fluid was the first thing I saw.

• Duke plays at Clemson at 9PM. USA Today says the Tigers are looking for revenge. The line hasn’t been posted yet, but as game time approaches you should be able to find it at VegasInsider or the Daily Line section at ESPN. This game should be extra fun for me as I’ll be at a party hosted by Duke grads.

  UPDATE 2010-01-23 09:10 AMThe spread shows that Duke is favored by 1 point.

• Willy Korn is heading to Marshall… at least to visit.
• Kevin Steele is staying at Clemson, and he’s even saying the right things about why.
  

  “Regardless of what people might believe, it’s a factual statement that money was never discussed in this process with Clemson University,” he said. “I’ve never talked to (athletic director) Terry Don Phillips or Dabo Swinney about one nickel. Not one nickel. And actually did the other. I told Dabo, ‘Coach, if you want to discuss money it’s going to offend me because it’s not about money.’ “

  To be open about this, when I heard the incorrect news that Steele was leaving, I didn’t care. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the D’s performance this year. The worst thing about the situation to me was not that he was leaving, but that we’d have to find a replacement on the fly. When news broke that he was staying, all the speculation was that he would be getting a nice raise from Clemson. That didn’t seem like such a good idea to me. He came in and, I would say, met — not exceeded — expectations. So why should he get a raise just for being contacted by alma mater? If it turned out that he was playing that game, and that Clemson played along, then I would have been pretty upset.

  Hopefully the Steele’s defense looks better in 2010.

• Clemson University apparently had extremely high voter turnout in this past election. “‘It is widely recognized that young people influenced the 2008 election by voting in larger numbers,’ said Campus Compact President Maureen Curley.” Seeing how that election came out, I don’t think I’d be bragging about that.

Addendum:

• Bad good PR: Stuckey to donate $10 for each point scored against Duke to Haitian Relief. Look, generosity is fantastic. That’s great. However, getting a press release as an NFL player earning over $400k/yr for committing to an approximately $700 donation is pretty silly. I’m hoping that it was supposed to say $100 per point. Just to be clear, the amount itself is fine, it’s the press release about the amount that bothers me.
• It appears that Kevin Steele will get a huge raise, amounting to a reported $200k on top of his current $375k/yr contract. Look, I don’t have any fucking problem with coaches making a lot of money. But I have a huge fucking problem with coaches getting gigantic raises only 1 slightly-better-than-mediocre year into a 3 year contract. If Kevin Steele deserves more money, give him an incentive based contract, and not this bullshit. If this raise is real, then everyone involved in pushing this raise through deserves a giant FUCK YOU!

So what should we look for in a new HC? I’ve had some thoughts on the matter, and now that I happen to have read Moneyball and The Blind Side in the last few days, I have more thoughts on the matter. Right now there are 4 things I think, and this is me talking on hunches, that we (or any team trying to hire a coach) should be wary of.

First, let’s call this the “anything you’ve done in the past year can and will be used against you” rule. Basically, any accomplishments made over the last year don’t count, but anything bad that happened does. I mention this because too many names appear just because the coach happens to be hot at that moment. Last year, mid-season, a lot of people wanted the coach from USF. A few losses later no one was so excited. Earlier this year, many people, myself included, put Bobby Johnson’s name on the watch list. Now no one is so excited about the coach of the 5-4 Commodores. Now a lot of people are listing Mike Leach because Texas Tech is 10-0. Sure they’re having a great season, but I think the odds are after this season his team will revert to the mean and be good but not great. Hiring a coach who comes off such a great season will be like buying dot.com stocks in the late 90s. I’ll give an exception to young coaches who may have only 1 year of HC experience.

Second, beware the coach with a really good kicker. Somewhere there has to be analysis of what an awesome kicker, or set of kickers, can do for a team. They can control the other team’s field position, and they can give you 3 points when you’re nowhere near the end-zone. I’m thinking of Jim Grobe right now. I’m wondering how well Wake would have done the last few years with a crappy kicker. A coach with a great kicker shouldn’t be disqualified, but there should be a warning flag. Here I’ll give an exception to coaches who seem to be skilled at specifically recruiting great kickers.

Third, a coach needs more than personality. A coach’s primary qualification should be something other than “toughness”. A lot of the candidates for our HC position seem to be judged by some subjective measure of their attitudes and personalities. I suspect that there is little to no correlation between the AD’s feelings about how good a guy should be and how good he actually is. [Yes, that's pretty much straight from [Moneyball.]

Fourth and finally, beware the coordinators of strong programs. I’m thinking of Will Muschamp here. I’ve heard great things about his personality, but I have honestly heard zero about his qualifications. He was at LSU from ’01-’04, Auburn from ’06-’07, and now he’s at Texas. He’s been a part of winning teams, but how well can we back out his contribution? For all I know, he’s good at finding jobs where there is so much talent that it’s almost impossible to fail.

Hopefully the consulting firm that is assisting TDP will take such factors into consideration. I strongly hope that they aren’t just buying empty reputations.

It appears Spence is going to stay at Clemson. To be honest, I could take him or leave him. I guess the best part of this entire situation is two fold. Stability has been created within the program, and it seems Spence has only good things to say about Clemson, his boss and his boss’s boss. I have to look a bit further into this and see that the administration is making the athletic department happy. More signs this program is heading in the right direction. Check out a few more details here.

Updated: Clem seems to have been bamboozled by TigerNet pranksters. A new low.

Just a tip for the future. When TDP announces something important, it shows up on ClemsonTigers.com. As an additional tip, anything that could possibly be construed as a scandal will be posted on a Friday.

Original post below:

Seems that way in wake of the tragedies from last year:

I am all for showing support for the Hokies but can someone explain how this is beneficial for anyone?

Apparently it is time for the yearly reporting of NCAA violations and other wrong doings. Now I expect that at some point or another an over-eager assistant in any given sport is likely to do something they shouldn’t. I belief these are considered Level II violations and result in silly punishments like letters of reprimand or a day or two off the recruiting trail (can you say more time to analyze tape and fill out paperwork). Half the time I am guessing they don’t realize their actions are against the rules until after the fact or someone tells them so. Anyway, we had a few of these but no sports were listed except the oft discussed (at least on this site) Women’s Rowing Team. Lueck’s “relief of duties” was mentioned after some preferential treatment including lodging was given by the coach to a student. Gee, I wonder who was involved. The article also mentioned the coach was let go a day prior to a match on Lake Hartwell and two weeks prior to the ACC’s. No additional details were spoken about and the new coach coming from Louisville was quoted, and I am paraphrasing, that the infractions were not to a degree that the program would lose stability. I would love to agree but only time will tell on that one. Nice media sound bite though as most probably have no clue what all is/was going on.

What irks me is this: One, the sidebar headline read “Ex-coach committed violations.” Now this was on the ESPNU College Sports (I assume this is the page for most of the non-revenue sports) that I linked just by hitting the “ESPNU” link at the top of the college football page. Now, I wasn’t differentiating the sport types at the time, but I was still surprised to see this. I figured this was the story but they spoke a lot about this and didn’t mention anything about names, teams, sports, etc on any of the other violations. As we all know ESPN is a huge outlet. Had I not gone back to reference the other stories on this page, I could have easily been pulled in thinking they had Danny Ford on something from 20 years ago, or something screwy going on with the basketball team. Either way a Clemson fan, or rival fan looking for a talking point would easily pick up on a headline like this and run with it. This wasn’t something on page 6 of 5 in the Anderson daily newspaper. I’ll be interested to see how the whole saga shakes out but now that the media attention is a bit more widespread. I’m wondering if the ripples (no pun intended) will build more into waves instead of fading out as I thought they were.

The athletic department has announced the hiring of Richard Ruggieri as the new head coach of the rowing team. Ruggieri comes from Louisville where he has been since 2000. His resume looks impressive. But let’s be honest. I don’t know jack about rowing so I really can’t evaluate his qualifications. Let’s just hope he isn’t batshit crazy.

The WIStv article hardly says anything about Ruggieri, but does bring up former coach Susie Lueck.

Lueck has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails asking for comment and Ruggieri, who was briefed on the dismissal, did not want to talk about the details.

A request made by The Associated Press under the state’s open records law for documents related to Lueck’s firing returned only the coach’s latest contract.

She was fired and there was no paperwork? Can you do that? Any lawyers care to comment?

Sources: Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, I have spent the past three months looking forward to a 5 day weekend which I will spend with my Clemson family in anticipation and finally enjoyment of the opening game of the 2008 Clemson Tigers Football Season. The atmosphere will be electric the entire weekend and will culminate on a nationally televised game on a Monday night in which all of the Tiger nation is planning on attending in some way or form and performing a Mecca to Death Valley and the temporary “City” of Clemson. After that weekend, the administration has decided to place the next two home games, which occur in the middle of September, will also occur around the dead middle of the day: 1 o’clock. Have we not learned our lessons from UGA a few years back or the BC game from 2 years back or any other early games that the fans and team have endured? Have they not figured out that The Valley just doesn’t have the same energy and excitement at a noon or 1 game that it does even at a 3 or later game? Even CJ and James stated that in the most recent edition of “TigerTime” where they noted that the stadium is exciting for any game, but the night games just have that noticeable energy. I know that the 1 o’clock game is the long standing tradition of Clemson football, heck that’s why the paw is cocked at the position it is, but mother nature doesn’t play nice that early in the season. I also know that the noon and 1 games are supposed to accommodate the traveling Tiger fanbase (re: distant IPTAY $$$) so that they can drive in and get back home in one day. This decision was not factored by TV as in the past so this can be the only factor I can find. I, personally, would rather have the environment that is Death Valley at night (afternoon) with fans screaming at the top of their lungs to the point that they are dizzy than the blistering exhausted dehydrated fanbase that can’t even cheer because that may spend the energy they need to walk to the concession stands to buy more water. Later in the season, when it is cooler, sure go ahead and play some early games but please keep the early season games to a 3 PM or later date!

With the recently released review of the AARC, can we stop pretending that this about a “level playing field?” Can we admit that this is about giving coaches the option of recruiting at the level of the lowest common denominator?

It really frustrates me that Clemson fans, who I like to pretend are intelligent human beings, will actually argue on such weak footing. To create a truly level playing field, the Clemson fanbase would have to support such stupid things as:

• contributing money to all schools so they can build a stadium identical to Death Valley
• helping other schools establish student-athlete support systems like Vickery Hall
• setting a cap on volume created by fans in Death Valley
• fining Dabo Swinney for recruiting too well relative to other schools

Those are pretty stupid, right? Yup, just as stupid as saying that fixing the AARC problem is about giving us a level playing field.

In other words, “we want to create a completely level playing field, but only in the few spots where we don’t already have an advantage.”