Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Big XII Media Days: A&M Looking to Billy C For Inspiration

Good news for Baylor and the rest of the Big XII South: Seems that new Texas A&M head coach Mike Sherman is looking to emulate Bill Callahan as he takes over the Aggies. Not only has he hired several members from the ousted Callahan regime (Randy Jordan, Buddy Wyatt, Dave Kennedy, Tim Cassidy, and Zac Taylor), he's even looking to use Callahan as a model as he builds the Aggie football program:
"It's not like I've asked Tim, 'Go ask Bill this or that,'" Sherman said. "But Tim will say, 'This is what Bill would do in this situation.' Bill was a heck of an NFL coach, and he has a lot of knowledge and has gone through this.

"Tim has gone through this with helping Bill adapt to the college game. He knows how this works."

"(Callahan and I)We're very similar."
Hey, if the Aggies want a clusterfool football program, be my guest. By the way, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has a wild idea. Rather than expand the league conference schedule from 8 to 9 games, he wants to play everybody in the conference. That would leave 1 non-conference game a season. Likely? No way for a couple of reasons. First of all, this would mean each conference school would alternate between six and seven home football games a season at most. Most schools are depending on seven or eight home games to fund their athletic departments. And with only one non-conference game to work with, that non-conference game would be a home game every year, which means that it will be a money game with a lower tier (Sun Belt, WAC, MAC, or 1-AA) team. So we'll have absolutely NO way to compare the relative strength between the Big XII and the other conferences. In fact, the inbreeding of these teams would result in the Big XII becoming more like the Big MAC (formerly Big 10/11), being exposed during bowl season.

Ron Prince refuses to admit that signing nineteen junior college players is hitting the panic button:
"At first blush, it's like, 'Oh, my goodness,'" he said. "But I think we have a unique way of putting teams together at Kansas State. And the way we do it here might not be the way you do it at other schools. But this gives us a chance to bring really confirmed and excellent football players who have proven it."

Maybe targeting junior college players worked at times for Bill Snyder, but even he didn't take nineteen at a time. For what it's worth, the Kansas City Star's Jason Whitlock is a believer. But all of the turnover in players and coaches has to be setting off warning alerts down in Manhattan. Especially when you realize that Kansas State doesn't play Mack Brown and the Longhorns this year or next:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping you heard Matt Schick doing Clownahan at the B12 Media Day on KOZN. Classic.

Husker Mike said...

I'm sure we'll continue to hear "Bill in New York" from time to time all season long.