The one trait most big-time college coaches share is a strategic lack of curiosity. Whether in the acquisition or retention of talent — or both — coaches know better than to know too much.
Why would that player come halfway across the country to play here? Why is that player driving a new Escalade? How is that player passing English 101? Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer. Stay ignorant, so you can plausibly deny everything and sadly acknowledge that the assistant you hired for his recruiting prowess had gone rogue.
That’s the way this strange little game of college athletics is played to protect the richest participants.
So I am not surprised that Kansas basketball coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend were encouraging their Adidas bag man to pay off the families of recruits. The coaches of the schools who occasionally beat Self for recruits probably have their own bag men.
We all see scandals through our own prism, and the part of this Kansas case that really bugs me is the spelling and grammar.
I think less of Self because he jeopardized his empire by personally interacting with perhaps the dumbest man to ever figure out how to turn on an iPhone. When your program’s money man is this stupid, he should only be allowed to communicate on a burner phone with a burner assistant coach. And, for God’s sake, turn on the autocorrect function.
Not that I expect a bag man to have memorized “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White, but T.J. Gassnola sent text messages that would make me wonder if he was trying to communicate with me or had accidentally dropped his phone off a rocky cliff. If I were the coach of a program capable of winning 14 straight Big 12 titles, I would not trust my whole recruiting operation to a man whose best guess at the first name of Deandre Ayton was “Dyondre.”
When Self asked Gassnola, “We good,” presumably in reference to Gassnola’s assignment to pay $20,000 to Silvio De Sousa’s guardian, Gassnola replied, “That’s was light work.” That’s an apostrophe catastrophe. A person that sloppy in his texting habits is just the sort of doofus who would have his phone tapped by the FBI.
If I were to demand of my bag man, “Just got to get a couple real guys,” I would not be confident if the response appeared to be written by a concussed Yoda: “The more you win, have lottery pics. And you happy.”
Self is not happy now. He and Kansas have promised to vigorously defend themselves against the NCAA’s charges of three Level 1 violations. Self’s only defense will be to proclaim he had no idea what Gassnola was writing about, which might not be that far from the truth.
I’m a Believer
Last week, I wrote that I would believe in the Missouri football team’s defense if it held South Carolina to 300 total yards and/or 4.5 yards per play. The Tigers held the Gamecocks to 271 total yards and 4.2 yards per play. Those weren’t the most important stats in a 34-14 victory — the two turnovers for touchdowns changed the game — but it showed Missouri could shut down a competent offense.
After the opener, the Tigers have done the most important things for any defense. They’ve created long-yardage situations by consistently stopping the run. They have pressured quarterbacks without blitzing. And they have covered opposing receivers well. When South Carolina coach Will Muschamp was asked about quarterback Ryan Hilinski’s struggles, he gave credit to the man-to-man cover skills of Missouri’s defensive backs.
“They had some tight coverage,” he said. “They played a lot of Cover 1, which we expected, and those were some tight windows he was throwing into.”
Compliments on coverage were rare last season, when Missouri gave up 262 passing yards per game.
Offensively, I thought Derek Dooley called his best game. The designed quarterback runs in passing situations kept the offense afloat while Kelly Bryant was missing open receivers early. I especially liked the play where tight end Albert Okwuegbunam went in motion and served as a lead blocker for Bryant. One drive after South Carolina defensive back Sherrod Greene chased down Larry Rountree from the backside on a run to the left, Dooley called a reverse to Johnathon Johnson to exploit the Gamecocks’ aggression.
The biggest lingering concern is the offense can’t impose its will near the goal line. Missouri got four cracks at South Carolina from the 2-yard line in the first quarter and didn’t score. It struggled near the goal line against Wyoming, too. The offensive line hasn’t been able to root out defenders well enough for Missouri to line up in tight formations and run up the middle, which is a little surprising for a team with enormous linemen and a power runner in Rountree. I could see that problem costing the Tigers a game if Dooley can’t find a better way to attack defenses from short range.
The Gold Standard
Nobody is better at playing hard-to-get than J’den Cox. He repeated as a gold medalist at the World Championships on Saturday in Kazakhstan. In four matches, he never gave up a point, beating Iranian Alireza Karimi 4-0 in the final. This was only the second time in the last 30 years an American wrestler completed an Olympic or World Championship tournament without yielding a point.
I don’t know much about international wrestling, but I do know It’s hard to lose if the opponent never scores.
Next year is an Olympic year, and Cox will have a chance to join a very select club of former Mizzou athletes who have won Olympic gold. Dan Pippin played on the 1952 men’s basketball championship team in Helsinki, and sprinter Jackson Scholz won the 200 meters at the 1924 Games in Paris and was part of the winning 4X100 relay team in 1920 in Antwerp.
Defense of the Indefensible
In this week’s Defense of the Indefensible, I suggest that wearing cleats for a halftime race against a helmet car is the right thing to do.
Perhaps you saw University of Missouri president Mun Choi sprinting down the field during the halftime helmet car race wearing a big smile and black Nike cleats. This was a confident move, like bringing his own ball to the bowling alley or his own cue to the pool hall. He was not approaching this event with ironic distance. And why shouldn’t he be serious, with a year’s supply of Andy’s Frozen Custard on the line.
After a false start that the other three competitors chose to ignore, Choi waved them back and took advantage of their fatigue with a quick opening burst. Although he finished second to the dean of the School of Health Professions and clutched his hamstring as he crossed the goal line, Choi did beat the helmet car piloted by athletic director Jim Sterk, who, in a wise career move, was driving that thing with a feathery foot.
