Rivals.com has 19 players from the ACC listed in their top 100 rankings for the draft tomorrow.  Ten of the 12 teams from the conference are represented in those 19. 

 Two of the guys that will be in the draft are from NC and played at ACC schools….

Dre Moore was a DT at MD for the past four years, but he is actually from Charlotte NC. 

DeMario Pressley is someone the triangle has seen a lot of the past four years as a DT at NCState, but his hometown is just down the road in Greensboro.

Good luck to the NC guys tomorrow. 

And if you want to study up before it all gets under way at 3pm or just see some of the highlights there is more video of the top 200 players that are elidgible for the draft on SI.com…check it out.

They have started early…The anticipation of football season always gets to me and the baseball season always seems to run sooooo long.  I can’t even play fantasy baseball anymore because I feel like it makes it take longer.

After this weekend and the football spring games, it makes this all worse.  Even Marcus and his ACC Football Report has gone on hiatus until June.  So I’ve started a countdown.  127 days until the fall season kicks off on August 28th.

But in the mean time, I’m glad that some NC schools decided to have their spring games since most other schools have already played.  UNC’s got canceled so we have to wait until the fall to see the dazzling technique of Butch and his boys.  I had a hard time deciding which one to go to with Duke, State and Wake all playing last Saturday.  I think that the cure all would be to just have each spring game on a different weekend in April for all of the NC teams.  That way everyone who is going through withdrawal will have four solid weekends of college football to tide them over until next August.

BUT my synopsis of the status of the three ACC teams after last weekend would be:

Duke tried everything to get fans there.  They gave away free food, they had a band and David Cutcliffe did everything in his power short of sacrificing a ram to get people out there.  I don’t know anyone who went, but I do know that the team has lost a combined 400+ lbs before the spring game just getting into shape.  We’ll see how the season will shape up but it sounds like Cutcliffe has done everything in his power to motivate his team.

Oh man, State.  They had the opposite problem that Duke had, with 14000+ fans in attendance.  The biggest thing I was hoping to see from this game was a solution to the QB problem they’ve had ever since #17 moved on to the Chargers.  We have seen Evans at work for 2 seasons so I hope his shoulder gets better after surgery but I really wanted to see Burke, Wilson, and Beck in action.  I have just read over the highlights (or lack there of) from the scrimmage but from the sounds of it, I sure hope the Mike Glennon is the secret weapon that State needs and his recruiting class can turn the whole team around…summer can’t be long enough for them as they are still trying to regroup.

I actually went to the Wake game Saturday.  Call me crazy, but I didn’t really want to go sit through State’s scrimmage and see exactly what I saw last year at the State/MD game…minus Darrell Blackman and Demario Pressley…Skinner is looking better than ever (and even more to some people who saw his photo shoot online earlier this year)….Hodges and McManis looked decent.  The offense spent more time on the field, and I really didn’t see many of the first string D play, so I’m gonna hope that means that they are ready.  Grobe kept his low profile in his old ragged sweatshirt and hat, and blended in with the crowd.  The basketball team was in attendance, and several other players who are elidgible for the draft were in attendance after finishing out their 2007 with the Deacs, including John Tereshinski.

So until these next 127 days are over I will be on the message boards for scout.com trying to squeeze every dollar out of my subscription to the Premium Football page of PackPride.  And watching the highlights for all of the recruits for ‘09.

I was in Winston Salem this weekend for Easter, and anytime that I am there I love to stop by Groves Stadium to see the progress on Wake Forest’s Deacon Tower.  Check out what I saw on Saturday:

The front of Deacon Tower underconstruction.  This is the side people will see when the come into the parking lot/stadium and the view from Deacon Blvd.

This is the view from inside of the stadium.  They are starting to tear out the bleachers in the middle section to put up black folding seats.

Can you believe the progress?  It looked smaller than NC State’s Vaughn Towers which were finished before the 2005 season, to me.  But it seems like Vaughn Towers doesn’t have any of their operations below the stands, and Deacon Towers starts down below.  It is set to be ready for the home opener this season on Sept 6 vs. Mississippi.  And the final product should be more like this:

For more pics of what it is supposed to look like check out the master plan.

If Miami makes the NCAA tourney this year, NC State will be the only ACC team that didn’t make a post-season appearance in a Bowl game for football or the Tourney for NCAAs.  Check it:

Teams that went bowling-

Boston College: Champs Sports Bowl

Clemson: Chick-fil-a Bowl

FSU: Music City Bowl

Georgia Tech: Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl

Maryland: Emerald Bowl

UVa: Gator Bowl

Va Tech: Orange Bowl

Wake- Meineke Car Care Bowl

Teams that didn’t make Bowls:

Duke- either a #1 or #2 seed in NCAAs

Miami- Currently at .500 in the ACC, they have BC at home on Wednesday and will be at FSU on Saturday.  They will finish at .500 at the least in the conference and with key wins against Duke and Clemson at home they are on their way to the dance.

UNC- #1 seed in NCAAs

And that leaves us with…NC State…so it looks like a team has it’s work cut out for itself next year…

Friday the ACC football schedules were released.  One of the main reasons I didn’t like the expansion of the ACC in 2003 was the fact that now not all ACC schools will get to play eachother as often.  2008 will be the first season in five years that State will play Duke.  This year is the same as the past four years, with each team missing a few ACC games…this year UNC will not be playing Wake, and there are a few other games that won’t be played again this year since they aren’t in the same divisions.

Here’s what it looks like for the Tobacco Road teams this fall:

Duke:

Aug. 30 JAMES MADISON
Sept. 6 NORTHWESTERN
Sept. 13 NAVY
Sept. 27 UVA
Oct. 4 at Georgia Tech
Oct. 18 MIAMI
Oct. 25 at Vanderbilt
Nov. 1 at Wake Forest
Nov. 8 NC STATE
Nov. 15 at Clemson
Nov. 22 at Va Tech
Nov. 29 UNC

UNC:

Aug. 30 MCNEESE STATE
Sept. 11 at Rutgers
Sept. 20 VA TECH
Sept. 27 at Miami
Oct. 4 UCONN
Oct. 11 NOTRE DAME
Oct. 18 at UVa
Oct. 25 BOSTON COLLEGE
Nov. 8 GEORGIA TECH
Nov. 15 at Maryland
Nov. 22 NCSU
Nov. 29 at Duke

NC State:

Aug. 28 at South Carolina (Thurs.)
Sept. 6 WILLIAM AND MARY
Sept. 13 at Clemson
Sept. 20 ECU
Sept. 27 SOUTH FLORIDA
Oct. 4 BOSTON COLLEGE
Oct. 16 FSU (Thurs.)
Oct. 25 at Maryland
Nov. 8 at Duke
Nov. 15 WAKE FOREST
Nov. 22 at UNC
Nov. 29 MIAMI

Wake Forest:

Aug. 30 at Baylor
Sept. 6 MISSISSIPPI
Sept. 20 at Florida State
Sept. 27 NAVY
Oct. 9 CLEMSON (Thurs)
Oct. 18 at Maryland
Oct. 25 at Miami
Nov. 1 DUKE
Nov. 8 VIRGINIA
Nov. 15 at NC State
Nov. 22 BOSTON COLLEGE
Nov. 29 VANDERBILT

The first sneak peak of the season at the spring games will come in April…State’s Red and White game will be April 19th, UNC’s spring game will be on April 5th but I haven’t seen the date for Duke or Wake’s games yet…Anyone else know the dates yet?…

Check out the full 2008 ACC schedule or check out these links for a more indepth look at the schedules for UNC, Duke, and State.

So Wednesday was College Football Signing Day for the incoming ‘08 classes and it made most of the ACC schools very happy.  Props to Miami and Clemson, who have the #1 and #2 nationally ranked incoming classes with FSU, VaTech, and NC State coming in within the top 20 classes, ranked by ESPN. 

I follow the recruits, and signing day chaos because it is cool to see who will be the key players in the next few years and because it is all over the boards and headlines.  But to be honest, I don’t give the rankings much thought beyond that because they really have no indication of how teams will finish next year, or even that these guys will do well in the college football world.  Take Jim Grobe and his Demon Deacons, as an example.  Has he ever gotten the top recruiting class in the nation?  Nah.  Not even close.  But yet he takes his team to a BCS game in 2006 and in 2007 they are back in a bowl and finishing in the top of the ACC.  I think that Signing Day has gotten way out of hand.  The high school athletes now come to expect the attention and feel like they can get away with what they want if they are signing with some of the big names in college football.  It gets the recognition that the Pros are getting- a camera at the High School waiting for their response, the kid picking up their future team’s hat to wear after committing, and all this for a 17-year-old…

But check out this hoax from earlier this week-Kevin Hart from a High School in Nevada called a press conference at his HS gym on Wednesday to announce where he will play football next fall.  He had two hats in front of him, Oregon and Cal, and after giving credit to the coach for recruiting him he made the big announcement that he will attend the University of California.  On Wednesday, I felt bad for Hart because rumors were flying that someone had set him up and even sent fake recruits so that he believed he was being recruited.  But the news came out later this week that he staged the WHOLE thing.  Can you believe it?  Is the pressure that great that the players now have to make up stories of being recruited and take them to that level?  When news of the recruit committing at this school assembly reached Coach Telford of Cal, it was the first time he had ever heard of Kevin Hart, much less that he was going to play on his team at Cal.  I am embarrassed for his High School that went through the whole charade, and for his family that he put them through it all.  The whole instance was being investigated by Nevada’s Interscholastic Athletic Assocation and law enforcement, and the Reno Gazette-Journal reported later on Wednesday that Hart admitted to making it all up.  The Reno Gazette-Journal Prep Sports blog goes into the story more in depth.

Kevin Blackistone agrees in his Fanhouse blog that college signing day has created athletic monsters and believes that the media has created this beast.  What do you think???

I was pleased with the outcome of Super Bowl XLII.  I was actually surprised, as most people were, that it was such a good game. 

As a Redskins fan it was really hard to cheer for the Giants, like I was fighting some innate feeling, but there was no way that I was going to go for the Patriots.  Besides their domination of the NFL over the past few years I still have a bit of resentment that many North Carolinians are still feeling and will always feel until the Panthers win a Super Bowl to make up for their loss to the Pats in 2004.

But while I am happy the Giants won, I don’t know what would have been the lesser of two evils in the outcome Sunday: the Pats winning, or listening to the 1972 Dolphins talk all next season.  Mercury Morris is relieved that he is once again relevant and will have his chance on ESPN to talk about how great that team was for another year.  I woke up Monday morning and turned on SportsCenter to see this commercial with the Giants delivering a package to ‘Perfectville’.  It is pretty commical and adds a little salt to the Patriots wounds, but nothing they shouldn’t have expected.  Many more of these commercials and the talk of how the Patriots ALMOST went undefeated will not go away anytime soon.

The ‘72 Dolphins opened up their traditional bottle of champaign after the last undefeated NFL team loses for the season Sunday evening, and you know they were sweating it Sunday.  A lot of people have given them a hard time for being so arrogant over the years and basking in their 17-0 glory, but Larry Little and other of his teammates have said that they never truly wanted the Patriots to lose, they are just enjoying the fact that they are still the only team to finish a season undefeated.  And that is something that the Patriots are still wondering what it feels like….

I need to start off by apologizing for the hiatus I have taken in the last week from blogging.  I just got back from Disney World, and have gotten back into the swing of things.

While I was in Orlando I saw tons of Kansas shirts and Tebow jerseys of the fans in town for the bowl games.  Congrats to the Jayhawks for the win over the Hokies, I know those fans that I ran into at Disney World enjoyed their trip.  The Gators might have been a little more disapointed, but their loss can’t overshadow the Heisman winner’s glory. 

I stayed at Disney’s Coronado Springs while I was there, and actually ran into a few players that were staying there for their week of practices, skill challenges, and bowl viewing parties, oh yeah- and the Under Armor High School All American Football game.  All of the guys I talked to seemed really excited to be there, but not excited about the early wake up calls every day (although 9:30am practice doesn’t sound too early to me since I am at work by 8:30am every day…).  There are 90 players closing out their high school career with the inaugural Under Armor All American Game today.  67 of those 90 are in ESPN’s top 150 High School Players.

The Skills Challenge was taped on Thursday and aired last night on ESPN2 and gave many of the players an opportunity to shine.  NC State commit Mike Glennon was one of those.  The QB won the Pass Attack Challenge.  Mike is the younger brother of Sean Glennon, senior QB for Virginia Tech.  State’s lack of a QB in the four seasons since Phillip Rivers has hurt and hopefully Mike Glennon will be the light at the end of the tunnel.  

Another winner of a Skills Challenge was homegrown athlete Dwayne Allen.  The Fayetteville native won the Hands Competition, where the athletes face a time trial full of catching passes through obstacles.  Check out the rest of the Skill Challenge Results.

The game will be on ABC today at 2:00pm.  The players will be divided up into the red and white teams, based more on their talent than where they are from.  I am stoked to watch some of the up and coming ACC players in the game.  The players that have committed to ACC teams that are participating include:

Clemson commits:

Kyle Parker - QB from Jacksonville, FL

Daquan Bowers- DT from Bamberg, SC

Xavier Brewer- CB from Jacksonville, FL

Andre Ellington- RB from Moncks Corner, SC

Miami commits:

Ramon Buchanan- LB from Melbourne, FL

Taylor Cook- QB from Eagle Lake, TX

Sean Spence- LB from Miami, FL

Aldarius Johnson- WR from Miami, FL

FSU commits:

EJ Manuel- QB from VA Beach, VA

Nigel Carr- LB from Jacksonville, FL

Terrance Parks- CB from Fairborn, GA

NCSU commits:

Brandon Barnes- RB from Louisburg, NC

Mike Glennon- QB from Westfield, VA

UNC commit:

Braden Hanson- QB from Charlotte, NC

BC commit:

Mike Goodman- OT from Miami

The future of the ACC lies in players like these!

….and the swag.  And the teams in the bowls are getting it all.  I love to see the gifts the bowls give every year.  The bowls are allowed to spend $500/player and are always able to top eachother with the biggest, most expensive, and newest technology.

Here’s a look at what the ACC teams will be getting for earning the chance to play in the post-season:

The Meineke Car Care Bowl will be providing Wake (and UConn) with their own GPS navigation systems by Garmin….and we know they will need those since the trip from Winston to Charlotte will be so long and hard to find….

A navigation system would be nice, but I wouldn’t need it (since I almost NEVER get lost…actually I am the worst person with directions).  I would rather have the iPod Nano Video that the Chick-fil-a Bowl is giving Clemson.

UVa is getting a pair of Oakley sunglasses that has the music and earphones built right in from the The Konica Minolta Gator Bowl.

Georgia Tech is getting a winter coat, gloves, and hat to take on their trip to a ski resort in Boise, Idaho to go tubing while they are there for the Humanitarian Bowl on the blue turf- along with a year subscription to XMRadio.

 Champs Sports Bowl is letting the entire Boston College team loose in Best Buy with a $400 gift certificate to get whatever they want.

And our ACC Champs, the Hokies are getting a panoramic picture that will be taken during the game at the Orange Bowl.  I’m sure that will come along with other stuff or just the money by itself.

I couldn’t find what the Criminoles Seminoles will get from the Music City Bowl, or what Maryland will get from the Emerald Bowl- but it won’t be a Wii system.  Three of the bowl were able to get them for all of their players, while the rest of us have to wait at Best Buy at 1am with the hopes of getting just one of them.

I think the coolest one was the iPod Touch that The Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl will give UCLA and BYU.  Check out the rest of the swag that will be given away this Bowl Season.

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