Varsity Kansas - The Blog

By J. Long

My boy Jeff Martin and I were were having a  conversation about gamesmanship earlier today revolving around Jason McElwain. If you don’t remember McElwain, he was the autistic high schooler from New York that captured the hearts of many Americans by making it rain from behind the arc in his only basketball game appearance.

Me, being a fierce competitor, told Martin that I don’t think I would have let him hit all those shots. That at some point, I would have to send one of them into the crowd. He laughed at me, but understood where I was coming from. He said that maybe after the third one he would have to put an end to the crowd pleasing show. To me three would have been two too many.

Would it have been bad gamesmanship to block his shot?

By J. Long

Miami has Arthur Brown. But let’s not pencil lil’ brother down as a Hurricane just yet.

Rival’s No. 2 rated running back and ninth best football prospect in the country East’s Bryce Brown is out enjoying the luxuries of being one of the best prospects in the country. Which means that he’s being wooed by any college football program that can get him on campus.

As you read this Brown is on his way back from a college tour with the Potential Players program operated by his mentor Brian Butler. While Brown verbally committed to the Hurricanes, he insists that it’s not yet a done deal. Miami has several things going for them - one being his older brother wearing a Hurricane uniform, but he wants to check out his options and see what the others calling have to offer.

Why shouldn’t he. He’s been up front with Miami telling him that he still was going to take his five official visits and that’s all he owes them. And though he won’t say it, I believe that Miami shouldn’t be real worried.

The “superstar treatment” as I like to call it doesn’t come often. He’s made the sacrifices that takes to be at the level he is at so he deserves the right to enjoy the perks. On this recent trip he got a chance to check out Illinois, Purdue, and Missouri which he liked a lot. He plans going to St. Louis for their game with Illinois on August 30. He also has plans to visit Oregon and Clemson and perhaps Ohio State and Texas if they fit into his schedule.

So it could get pretty interesting this recruiting season. Then again it could be pretty quiet. The only person that knows is Bryce Brown and nobody should fault him for making sure he uses all the time he has to make sure he’s making the best choice.

By J. Long

September 4 (Thursday)

Carroll at Heights

September 5 (Friday)

Hutchinson at Rockhurst (Kansas City)

How crazy is this? Talk about starting the season with a bang. BC and Heights on Thursday night to jump-start City League play and then Hutchinson hits the highway to take on perennial power Rockhurst.

There might not be a better weekend of high school football.

Carroll QB Blake Bell is getting a lot of buzz for someone who hasn’t thrown the ball in a high school game. So it will be very interesting to see how he fairs in his first game against a pretty good defense. I don’t know much about Heights but they are pretty athletic on the defensive side and they have Ian Knight one of the top defensive ends in the state according to Rivals.

Hutchinson vs. Rockhurst will pit two football powers against one another. Hutchinson finished last season as the fourth-ranked team in USA Today’s Super 25 prep Football regional rankings while Rockhurst was seventh.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps/football/poll/2007-regional-ranking.htm

So what do you think? Has there been two better games to start the football season?

by joanna

The Pretty Prairie rodeo starts tonight and runs through Saturday. I’ll be there on Thursday doing a story. Jonathan will be the man on Friday and Saturday.

I have to admit I’m looking forward to it, even though it’s not exactly my forte.

Speaking of the rodeo, Corey Hutchinson, a Maize junior was named to the state high school  rodeo team and will participate in the National High School Finals Rodeo starting Sunday in Farmington, N.M. He qualified in bareback riding.

by joanna

After watching Conway Springs’ conditioning for football this morning — 6:30 a.m., ugh for me — I started thinking way back to my days of high school volleyball and the conditioning we went through. I vividly remember the heat and humidity of the gyms that had no AC. It was terrible.

But the worst part was the wall squats. Just that burning that hit your thighs. Man, that was terrible.

So what was the worst for you? For that matter, what did you like about conditioning.

by joanna

This is no joke. I was checking out the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s high school blog and found this hilarious note about Illinois adding bass fishing as a new sport. Check out this link.

I started cracking up. But it’s for real.

As funny as this is, I have to admit that I snickered when I heard about the City League adding bowling. But I am a convert now. I know, I know, I’ve always believed that if you can still do a sport when you’re eating and drinking a beer (not that any high schoolers are doing that!), it shouldn’t be a sport. But I have changed my thinking.

I think Minnesota would think about adding this as a sport, what with all the 10,000 lakes and all.

OK, so let me ask you, what should be added as a sport? You might be serious and say hockey or lacrosse. Or you might be silly and say, ping-pong? Maybe Wii bowling? That might be fun.

Let me hear from you.

Tuesday is the day.

NCAA 09 is set to release tomorrow and I can’t wait. Though most of my video game brethren list Madden as their football video game of choice, I ride with NCAA.

An interesting twist- that has nothing to do with gameplay -is that depending on what system you have you’ll get a different player on the cover.

Xbox 360 - Darren McFadden

PS 3 - Matt Ryan

PS 2 - DeSean Jackson

PSP - Owen Schmitt

Wii - Sparty (Mascot of Michigan State who was picked in a contest by fans to be on the cover)

What’s funny is that obviously McFadden is on the 360 cover because he’s the premiere name and more people who play this title will do so on 360. But looking at the other systems the higher the prestige the better the athlete. I mean no disrespect to Schmitt who was a good player at West Virginia but nobody outside of “real” college football fans know who he is. I play with WV on the 08 game and I’ll gladly take him out to run a two back offense (three backs if you want to count Pat White). I say that to say that on the game I don’t think he makes that big of an impact. On the game that is

But anyway.

I shall pose this question. Who is the SECOND most unstoppable video game athlete of all-time. Yes I said SECOND.

Bo Jackson on Super Tecmo Bowl is easily the greatest. There shouldn’t even be a debate there.

But coming up with a number two is pretty hard. Some that stick out to me are:

Mike Tyson (Punch Out)

Randy Moss (Madden 2004)

Mike Singletary (Tecmo Bowl)

Lawrence Taylor (Tecmo Bowl)

Glenn Rice (NBA Live 95)

Your Created Player (Live 95)

I wasn’t big on baseball games or hockey games so that’s just my list. So give me yours.

by joanna

The reason I ask this question is because a friend of mine was recently called out by an athlete for a reason he still can’t quite figure out.

So let me ask you, through your job or in your playing days (past or present), have you ever been called out in a public manner?

It’s happened to me a couple times. I’ve written often about Southeast boys coach Carl Taylor getting mad at me after a game and telling me that if I want to talk to his players, I need to ask him first — this was in front of about 30 people. I think the reason I remember that so vividly is because he apologized right there after I pointed out that he doesn’t mind if I grab a player when they win, but it changes when they lose?

When I was at Mizzou, I covered a men’s game at OU when Kelvin Sampson was coaching (mid-1990s) and OU had won after getting something like 55 free throw attempts to Missouri’s 20 (or something like that). So I asked him if it made a difference in the game. Oh. My. God. He went off on me. I was all of 22 and the press conference was packed with media and boosters and everyone is staring at me. I was shaking, I’m serious. After his rant he looked at me and I said, “So coach did those free throws make a difference?” And he responded as if nothing had happened and said that of course it did, blah, blah, blah.

Whew. I can still remember how my legs felt so shaky and there was sweat trickling down my back. Ugh.

I know athletes go through this with coaches — during a game or a practice. Has it happened to you? Maybe you’ve done it to someone.

I’d love to hear about it.

by joanna

This story that was forwarded to me by Jeffrey Martin (we talk about our blogs a lot and how to better them — check out his at http://blogs.kansas.com/kstated/ or here) about how financial issues in many cities across the country are forcing schools to either raise pay-to-play, cut sports entirely or, in one case, raise money to fund sports without state or city help. Here’s the story from Sports Illustrated

This story is definitely upsetting and disturbing. Times are definitely tough, but it frustrates me to no end when I see extracurriculars — whether it be drama or baseball — getting cut to save money. I’m always blown away by those who don’t see the importance of these activities. Although I certainly heard from several vocal people when I wrote about athletic facilities and the bond issue.

So what are your thoughts?

by joanna

You know, sometimes there’s things that just don’t go into a post all by themselves. So here’s some of my musings:

• Heights football coach Rick Wheeler was invited to the NFL’s Youth Football Summit in Canton, Ohio, during the time leading up to the Hall of Fame inductions. (next week)

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