OK.....the news. I said I'd have a recruiting list update, but I don't. There isn't any news, really. Oh, sure: various players are setting up official visits and even naming them, it's that time of year. But nobody's committed anywhere in the last week, nobody's named any top fives or anything like that. Even in the stalkeresque obssessive world of recruiting, everyone's got a line, and mine's located somewhere in the neighborhood of caring that somebody's visiting another school 700 miles away, which I don't. I will note, however, that Rex Burkhead and Arthur Fontaine are pretty close to being taken off the list. Fontaine is talking Georgia Bulldogs in the kind of tone that should make a Georgia fan pretty happy, and will probably commit around the time he next visits Athens, which will be soon. (So much for the line.) Burkhead is from Texas, where we don't do so hot, and has loads of offers and will be narrowing the list pretty soon, and what he's saying is that he likes the schools he's visited, and he has not visited Charlottesville. I don't see this one happening.
Along the lines of yesterday, more notes, again of the not-as-fluffy variety:
- Groh didn't know Brett Favre was traded. (OK, that one is pretty useless.)
- Jimmy Howell is likely to be the punter. (CDP, above.) I'm expecting Howell to be pretty good, so this is good news. Ryan Weigand gave us some good work from back there, but I'm still squeamish about the punter position. Lingering bad memories from a Florida State game a few years back where we lost when Florida State started a bunch of drives already in field goal range because Tom Hagan literally could not kick a football more than 30 yards. So I'm pretty convinced of the importance of having a decent punter.
- Quarterback J.C Poma will join the walk-ons as soon as NCAA rules let him. (CDP, above.) Pre-beginning-of-fall-classes roster limits are the reason he's not there now.
- The kicking job is wide open. Chris Hinkebein impressed nobody in the spring, so the job is anyone's to win between Hinkebein, Rob Randolph, Yannick Reyering, and just about anyone else who wants it. If your grandma walked on, they'd walk her out to the 25 yard line and have her give it a shot. (Mine, no. She's a wonderful spry old lady, but her plant foot had polio once upon a time, so she'd have to take a medical redshirt.)
- Sean Gottschalk is bigger. How exciting.
- The soccer team has some transfers coming in. (RT above.) Yeah, we do the "other" football here too, every once in a while. Both are defenders; Matt Weiler joins us from Kentucky and Jordan Evans transfers from Richmond. Both are most-of-the-time starters on bad soccer teams. (Richmond scored 7 goals in 19 games, which is awful even by soccer's low-scoring standards, and Evans had one of them.) Beyond that I have no idea how good these guys are. I don't even really know what makes a good soccer player. Those of you who care about this news will probably know more than I and should probably educate me. Those of you who don't care, also don't care about this news, so I'm off the hook with that crowd.
0 comments