Preseason Beer of The Week
In honor of worthless pregame coverage of exhibition preseason games, we thought we should warm up for the season with a little Beer of the Week practice.
August Beer.
Today was IPA Day. This makes sense because it’s August, you know, summertime, when it’s hot and an IPA tastes pretty good. And even though IPA’s time has now clearly passed in the hipster beer-geek world, at least that’s an actual beer.
As opposed to Pumpkin anything. As we’ve stated multiple times, pumpkin beer is a bullshit excuse to get non-drinkers to open their wallets and sugar their glasses. Even you PumpKing. And you Punkin. And all of you other horrible punning names stealing shelf-space, in the middle of the damned summer already, from real beer. Please go away. Pumpkin beer on an Ashburn porch is to the 2010’s what Strawberry Daiquiris were to the 80’s in a fern bar. Disgraceful.
Ok, glad we got that off our chests. Now on to a couple of football related items. As most of you know by now, the P5 conferences (formerly the BCS) voted to give themselves autonomy today from the rest of the NCAA teams. You’re welcome to deep-dive this, but the main effect seems to us to be pushing the G5 conferences (CUSA/MAC/SunBelt among them) back towards FCS. At least until one or more of those conferences vote, as they are now allowed to do, to keep up with the Joneses on the “full cost of attendance” and other benefits now coming for the big boys. Of course, this also officially means FCS/1-AA/JMU are officially Division II. But hey, at least NC State announced a game in five years with JMU! (a game they’ll almost certainly not be allowed to play under new rule changes but we can crow now and continue bilking our boosters under false pretenses)
On the positive side, Akeem Jordan was in on a couple tackles for the Skins tonight. We couldn’t bear watching long enough to see if Caussin played so fill us in below in the comments. Also, check out this cool story on Jordan Stanton, who’s certainly cranking up the press and hopefully forcing the Giants to take a long look.
Akeem recovered a fumble. Gotta keep him.
Caussin did not play last night. just a camp body I assume.
If and more likely when the G5 conferences follow suit with the P5 by allowing stipends, etc, they’ll further distance themselves from FCS.
JMU already takes about 1 in 10 recruits from an FBS school and that number will decline even more after the stipends are introduced. It will be a rare sight that we get a recruit that also has an FBS offer. No student will turn down being paid to play.
Our leaders are fools by thinking the SBC isn’t better than the CAA at this point.
Agreed- get in the SB now! Or atleast have an agreement in principle to announce after this coming sports season. We screwed the pooch by waiting around.
I think some of you folks are worrying about the next change, not this one. Yesterday’s ruling set the Big 5 conferences on the path to propose new rules and distinguish themselves from the rest of the NCAA. Assuming the proposals go through and pass, the SEC, B1G, etc will be able to provide a better deal to athletes. The non Big 5 FBS conferences (MAC, SB, etc) aren’t yet on that path and won’t be able to.
Should the MAC, SB, etc decide they want to establish new rules, they can propose them in the future but would need to have them accepted by their league. It remains to be seen what the appetite for change in these lower tier FBS leagues is, but it seems obvious that most of the schools won’t have near the resources of the SEC, B1G, etc schools and thus might not be able to close the gap that much.
So yeah, JMU will probably not be beating out an Big 5 schools for recruits once the changes are implemented. That’s no change. There might be more competition to recruit against lower tiered FBS though. Good recruiters can create a pitch to distinguish JMU in that situation (play for championships vs. playing in a marginalized second tier w/o championships for ex.)
To me, this really just more firmly establishes what we already knew. The SECs and B1Gs of the world are on a completely different level than the rest of the NCAA. That gap will widen. And there will be more changes. Those changes might be good for JMU (completely new classification and leagues) or could be bad (non Big 5 leagues circling the wagons and shutting out all new entrants). If the next change comes along and JMU hasn’t improved its position, I’ll be upset. Right now I don’t think there is cause for concern as much as their is a call to action for Bourne et. al to get on the ball and do whatever they can to position JMU for that next change.
My only quibble with your article:
“summertime, when it’s hot and an IPA tastes pretty good”
IPA’s taste good all year round my punkin’ friend!!
Rob, there has been cause for concern for a long time now. Please pass the IPA you’re drinking if you’re content with the failure that is JMU admin.
LOL. People are talking as if the stipend will allow players to get paid now. Hilarious. If you think they aren’t paid already, you need to reevaluate how you look at college sports.
@Toby You or anyone else being dissatisfied with the JMU admin is a completely different issue than worrying about the implications of the Big 5 getting increased autonomy. If you don’t think the JMU admin has positioned, or will position JMU for maximize return in the future that’s fine. We can discuss that as a unique (and legitimate) issue. From my optic however, yesterday’s news does very little other than formalize what most of us already knew, that the Big 5 has very little in common with the rest of the NCAA.
I’m not trying to drink the Purple Kool Aid or defend the JMU admin. I’m simply trying to separate the facts from the speculation, conjecture, and panic and analyze things as I see them. If you don’t think that the JMU admin is equipped to lead JMU into a rapidly changing future, that’s fine. I might even agree with you. Let’s not confuse that and other developments though and act like yesterday’s news is a death sentence to JMU athletics in and of itself. It’s simply not.