Actual Football News! (22 days till kickoff)
Well, we’re happy to report that after the thoroughly underwhelming news that the Great Danes and a school confused for a yogurt-maker are being added to the conference for football only earlier this week, at least we’ve had actual news to follow this week. Huge credit to the Daily News Record’s Matthew Stoss this week (@MatthewStoss). We’ve given him a rough time since he took over the JMU football beat before last season, but he’s been all over training camp with consistent photos and updates on twitter. The very short version of first week highlights:
Justin Thorpe is the clear QB1. Vandy transfer Lafante Thoroughgood is alleged to be a step slow picking things up, but still ahead of the promising freshmen. Remember, Jace Edwards is no longer with the team.
No word from the NCAA yet on a sixth year of eligibility for Thorpe, though the program remains hopeful.
WR/QB/Slash guy Andre Coble has been ruled academically ineligible and will miss the season. He will get to redshirt and gain an extra year if he chooses to work on the old matriculation portion of his time in the ‘Burg. Although the team will miss his trick-play ability and versatility, the scarier thing here is what to do if JT and Thoroughgood are both injured at some point. Would’ve been nice to roll with Coble at QB if it was just for a quarter or a half instead of pulling a redshirt off one of the prize frosh. Needless to say, we’ve seen that movie a few times the last couple of seasons. Have to hope this is the only major “injury” of camp.
Lots of running the ball.
Defense is ahead of the offense.
GREAT, FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLY GOOD NEWS from on the media front as JMU announced that ALL MadiZone broadcasts (audio and video) will be 100% free of charge for this athletic year. I seriously cannot even tell you how much more JMU sports action we’ll be watching and I don’t think we’re alone on this. Especially men’s hoops. We were always willing to pay for any football we couldn’t get on television, but some of the other pay content was a tougher proposition, particularly on random winter Tuesdays when you really just want to follow along, but not so much that your wife and kids hate you and you can’t act like your also paying attention to them.
Women’s soccer has already played an actual scrimmage, losing 1-0 to VT. Seriously getting excited!
Former Duke CJ Sapong and Sporting Kansas City won the US Open Cup by defeating the Seattle Sounders this week.
Former Dukes LB Arthur Moats appears to have the inside track on a starting spot for an improving Buffalo Bills defense. Would certainly be a great opportunity to play behind someone like Mario Williams.
And oh yeah, former women’s soccer player Christina “Corky” Julien earned a bronze medal as an alternate for the Canadian women’s soccer team. That means out of three Dukes athletes in London, they picked up a silver and a bronze. We like those odds!
1. Justin Thorpe is the clear QB1.
2. Vandy transfer Lafante Thoroughgood is alleged to be a step slow picking things up
3. WR/QB/Slash guy Andre Coble has been ruled academically ineligible and will miss the season.
…Way to totally sink my battleship before we even kickoff the season. We have a QB who can’t hit the broadside of a barn, a backup QB with special learning needs, and a mickey-matthews-swiss-army-knife who apparently had more important things to do on his free-ride to JMU than attend class and study like the rest of us did/do. In Coble’s defense, I’m sure his last semester was loaded up with Organic Chemistry and Intermediate Financial Accounting. Glad I’m not going to have to actually pay for it this year.
Sorry. When you spent 5 years taking a program from literally a campus joke to a national football powerhouse, you have incredibly high standards. It really pisses me off to see these guys clown around. Even with a totally one-dimentional and semi-disfunctional team, we made it to the national semi-finals last year. How much better would we be if we pull our crap together? I still think they have gone too hollywood.
Just saw a Livingsocial deal for cheap tickets to the WVA game. A little disappointed that ticket sales are so slow that they need to go this route. A lot disappointed that both universities allow the promoters to screw over the few of us who bought tickets ahead of time for full price but should have just waited.
Yeah, it sucks for folks who bought tickets early, but maybe it will draw a bigger crowd to the game. If it makes you feel any better, you’ll be welcome to the JMUSB tailgate party. Details will be provided soon.
On the bright side, Mickey seemed pretty positive about a lot of other things at the press conference on Friday. He spoke very highly of the team’s depth- a great thing considering how last year went- and even said the offense might be just a step ahead of the defense at this point. I think that’s great news, considering how anemic the offense typically looks through non-con play.
And our secondary sounds a lot better too. That was my biggest concern after watching Maine and NDSU torch us last year.
The lower bowl seats offer on the LivingSocial deal are not nearly as good as the seats from JMU.
What makes you say that? I didn’t order them, but everything I’ve heard from people that did is that Living Social didn’t tell you where your seats were in the lower bowl when you ordered them. Is there some sort of special section for the Living Social seats or are you just saying that they aren’t as good because there is a chance you’ll be seated in worse seats? Like I said, I didn’t order them and I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m just curious.