Over at the college football website I run, CrystalBallRun.com, I brought up what I thought to be a very interesting talking point yesterday afternoon: Has USC’s Pat Haden evolved into the best Athletic Director in college sports? Well, after thinking about it some more last night, doing some research, and talking to a few folks who’ve spent time around USC’s athletic department, I’ve decided to take this conversation one step further and say this: As of right now, Pat Haden is the best AD in college sports. Period. End of story. Thanks for coming, and drive home safely.
Phew, I’m glad we got that out of the way. And now that we have come to the broad, big picture conclusion of this article, let’s work our backward to the beginning, to see how we got there.
Of course before I get started, I should get one pretty big caveat out of the way: I do understand that in this case, “the best” is something that’s impossible to prove. It’s impossible to say that Haden is the “best” AD in college sports right now, in the same way it’s impossible to say that Nike makes the “best” shoes, pecan is the “best” pie, or that Kourtney is the “best” Kardashian sister. I may think it. I may feel it in my gut. But it is impossible to prove, especially with so many other really good AD’s out there. You know the names just like I do, and as college athletic departments have evolved into the multi-million dollar corporations that they are today, the men and women who are running them have evolved just the same. Guys like Mal Moore at Alabama, Jeremy Foley at Florida and DeLoss Dodds at Texas, are as bright and intelligent as anyone, in any field.
Then again when it comes to Haden and all his contemporaries, there is one major difference between the USC AD and everyone else: All of the others I just mentioned either walked into an already good job and made it great, or took a great job and made it elite. But Haden? He walked into the Roman empire, but did so after the fall had already begun.
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Of every college football player in recent memory, you could argue that none had a more tumultuous career for reasons outside his control, than former Tennessee Vol and recent Carolina Panthers signee Tauren Poole. From Phil Fulmer’s firing, to Lane Kiffin sneaking out the backdoor, straight through Derek Dooley’s orange pants, Poole saw it all, and late last week he joined me to discuss everything, including the NFL Draft process and much more.
Amongst the topics we discussed, included the following:
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- The early part of the NFL Draft process, including going to the East-West Shrine Game and the NFL Combine. Tauren also tells the story of the most inappropriate question he heard from an NFL player personnel representative, a question that will quite literally shock you.
- How Tauren handled the NFL Draft knowing that he might get undrafted, and why he actually barely watched the draft at all.
- The fast and furious nature from the free agent signing period that landed Tauren in Carolina. Why he chose the Panthers, and why a familiar face on the Panthers coaching staff should help make the transition easy for him.
- Why Tauren is so excited to play for the up-and-coming Carolina Panthers, and why admittedly, he’s excited to play with Cam Newton. Tauren also shares what it was like watching Cam tear through the SEC in his junior year, and why even as a fellow player, he became a “fan” of Cam.
On Saturday, the never-ending Ferris wheel ride that is college football realignment took another spin, when more rumors surfaced about a heavy flirtation between Florida State and the Big XII Conference. The news hit with a flash, and only got flashier when a high-ranking Board of Trustees member as well as FSU head football coach Jimbo Fisher both made public statements supporting the school’s effort to look outside the ACC. And when those comments hit, well my goodness did it cause an uproar; on Twitter, message boards, and every strange internet outpost in between.
There was one place that the news fell on mostly deaf ears though. That place? My house.
That’s right. You better believe I saw the news, and rather than sprinting to my computer to learn the facts, instead let the news roll off my back like water at the local pool. I didn’t click on any links, didn’t read any message boards and didn’t call up any friends in Tallahassee looking for the inside scoop. Instead, I caught a couple of Josh Hamilton’s at-bats that afternoon, readied for Game 7 of Nuggets-Lakers, and spent the rest of the evening enjoying life’s simple pleasures, like purchasing an overpriced drink at Starbucks and battling a couple haggard, middle-aged men for the last few Mother’s Day cards at Walgreens. To quote the movie “Old School” it really was a “nice, little Saturday.”
And ironically my apathy to the whole situation wasn’t planned. It wasn’t some deep-rooted, passive-aggressive stand against the powers that be in college football or anything like that (like they would’ve cared), but instead, the truth lies in a simple realization I came to while sipping on the mocha-frappa-whatchamacallit I bought at Starbucks.
That truth? I simply don’t care about college football realignment anymore.
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Well, we’ve officially reached that point in the calendar year.
No, I’m not talking about the “point” when Josh Beckett decides to singlehandedly submarine the Red Sox season (although that does seem completely applicable on this particular morning). Nope, instead I’m talking about the “point” where I officially have no idea what to write here at Aaron Torres Sports. College football and basketball are over, Major League Baseball just started, and I still haven’t watched enough of the NBA Playoffs to have a real “feel” for any of the teams. As for hockey, well, let’s get real for a second: I stopped paying attention to hockey 15 years ago (wait, is Steve Yzerman still in the league?).
Therefore, I decided to do something a little different today. Rather than write some important and meaningful article on some big-picture subject in sports that will make you think deeply, and question everything you ever thought you knew… I instead decided to jot down the first 50 random thoughts that popped into my head.
Now granted, I’ve done these “50 Random Thoughts” columns before, but usually they at the very least, have a theme. Today, not so much. Instead, I just jump from thought to thought, from the NHL to NBA to bad reality TV, the same way Derek Jeter jumps from blondes to brunettes to… well, you get the point.
Regardless, here they are: 50 Random Thoughts….On Just About Everything.
It’s another day, and time for the spring football podcast series to roll on. After discussing the Texas Longhorns with Orangebloods.com’s Taylor Gaspar on Tuesday, on Wednesday we were lucky enough to be joined by ESPNLA’s Pedro Moura to chat on the preseason No. 1 team in the country, the USC Trojans.
Pedro has been covering USC for years, and on Tuesday we discussed all things Trojans from Matt Barkley’s struggles, the evolving defense, home exercise programs and more, beginning with…
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- The untimely passing of USC legend Junior Seau. Many current players knew him, and many paid tribute in their own unique ways. How is the ‘SC community reacting as a whole?
- On the field, what’s the attitude surrounding USC’s football program right now? The postseason ban has been lifted, but the expectations have risen. Is this group ready to handle the challenge?
- Year three of Monte Kiffin’s reign as defensive coordinator. The defense isn’t big, but it is athletic, and the question now becomes whether or not there is enough depth to hold up over a full season. Pedro believes so.
After a one-week “vacation hiatus” the Aaron Torres Sports college football podcast series is back, as we welcome Taylor Gaspar from the esteemed University of Texas media outlet Orangebloods.com to the show on Monday.
Orangebloods.com is the industry leader for all things Texas football, and on Monday, we discussed several sports betting sites on the show, including the following:
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- The role Orangebloods.com played in the realignment news of 2010 and 2011. What was it like to be in the eye of it all? What did Taylor learn as a young journalist, but also as a college football fan too? And most importantly, does the Big XII finally have some stable footing?
- What to make of Mack Brown’s refusal to name a starting quarterback coming out of the spring game? Does it mean anything, and is there any reason to believe that David Ash won’t be under center in Week 1?
- How, for the first time maybe ever, the Longhorns have real depth at running back. At the same time, why Mack Brown wants to see everyone stay healthy before he heaps too much praise on them.
- How Manny Diaz went from “little known defensive coordinator” to “rock star” over the course of last season, and why Taylor believes it’s only a matter of time before he ends up as a head coach at a major Division I program.
- What will Diaz’s second Texas defense look like, and why there’s enough talent for them to be just as good statistically as they were in 2011.
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It took all of one inning to realize what a giant mistake I’d made. Here it was, Sunday night, and after I’d spent the last week pimping Bryce Harper to my Twitter followers, telling them to watch him play any chance they got, here Harper was on national TV, and I was nowhere to be found. I was plenty busy doing other stuff, sure. But still, there are no excuses. Shame on me for not heeding my own advice.
As we now know, not tuning in right away turned out to be a big mistake. Within one inning Harper quite literally got the baseball world buzzing when, on a whim, he decided to, umm, steal home. Yes, you read that correctly. In the first inning, of the eighth game of his career, Bryce Harper stole home. It wasn’t pre-planned and no one told him to do it. He did it because he’s Bryce Harper, and when you’re Bryce Harper, you decide to do things like “steal home on a whim.” The play itself was totally awesome, and more importantly, totally out of the ordinary. At the same time, there is nothing ordinary about the way Bryce Harper plays the game of baseball.
Like most of you, I’ve known about Harper since long before his Major League debut two weeks ago. I read the Sports Illustrated profile back on him in 2009, the one that called him the “LeBron James of baseball. I watched as he got his GED, skipped his junior year of high school to play junior college ball, then went on to be the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2010 draft, at a time he was supposed to be getting ready for his last year of high school ball.
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On late Thursday afternoon, a small, yet kinda big news nugget hit the wires, when USA basketball announced that they had officially extended two new invitations to try out for this summer’s Olympic team. The first, James Harden, should surprise no one (well, unless you’re surprised that USA basketball would consider letting someone who looks like a Batman villain represent our country in London this summer). But the second guy? Well, that’s where it gets interesting, as it was announced that along with Harden, Anthony Davis would be trying out for the team as well.
In case you’re wondering, yes, we’re talking about that Anthony Davis. The one who was a no-name high school recruit at this time two years ago. The one who was just learning his first low-post move six months ago, in the same gawky way teenagers first learn to parallel park. The one with the world’s most famous uni-brow. That Anthony Davis.
That guy may be representing our country against the world’s best this summer. And you know what? I absolutely, positively love it.
Prior to my vacation to Miami last week, I was chatting with my buddy Matt, when he innocently asked me a simple question: “So, what do you guys have planned for the trip?”
Frankly, I had no idea. I mean, I knew we’d hit the beach, eat some good food, and sip on a bunch of overpriced drinks, since after all, that’s what dudes in their late ‘20’s do on vacation. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything special on the docket, except for a random trip to the new Marlins Stadium. At the time I wasn’t even certain we’d go, although I gave it stronger consideration when Matt described it as a place that “Looked like Disneyland for Adults.”
Well, Matt, you were pretty much correct my friend. Although if you’ll allow me to, I’d like to take that last sentence one step further.
Marlins Park isn’t just “Disneyland for Adults” but instead, a place I’d more accurately describe as “One of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.” A place where baseball games are played and forgotten, drowned out by salsa music, dancing women and broken marriage vows. A place you go expecting to attend a sporting event, and instead end up at, just “an event.” A place that is truly indescribable with words from the English language.
Marlins Park is also a place that I can definitively say I had one of the five best days of my life.
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After visiting with the Bleacher Report’s Barrett Sallee last week to cover all things spring football in the West, Barrett was nice enough to join me again on Wednesday to discuss the East.
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The East has plenty of storylines in its own right, and Barrett and I discussed them all. We started with John L. Smith’s hiring at Arkansas, before moving permanently to the East and chatting on:
- Georgia: What is going on in Athens? Why is everyone getting in trouble, and is it a sign of a “big picture” problem? More importantly, how has the depth been effected by all the suspensions?
- Moving to Florida, what should we make of the quarterback derby? Also, what do we need to know about Brent Pease’s new offense? Maybe most importantly, how will the defense hold up without Ronald Powell, who was lost to injury?
- At South Carolina, do enough people realize just how good Connor Shaw was last year? Will this defense be impacted by the departures of Melvin Ingram and Stephon Gilmore to the NFL?
- On Rocky Top Tennessee, is Tennessee mentally tough enough to hold strong? More importantly, would Derek Dooley even be on the hot-seat if the Vols hadn’t lost to Kentucky to close out last season?
- With Missouri moving to the SEC, are they ready for what’s ahead in the conference? And why Barrett thinks one early season game could make or break their season.
- Finally, we wrap up discussing Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Both are in tough spots, but who is best built to win in 2012?
Folks, spring is in the air, so what better what to turn your attention to college football, then a 50-minute, no-holds barred discussion of the SEC East? Remember too that if you missed last week’s discussion on the SEC West, you’re more than welcome to download that one too.
Remember, you can access this podcast a number of ways. Obviously you can listen here by clicking the green box above, or just go straight to iTunes to download the show for later listening. You can also subscribe to the Aaron Torres Sports Podcast, for updates every time a new episode goes up.
And finally, remember that Exclusiv Vodka is now an official sponsor of the Aaron Torres Sports Podcast. And as a thank you for listening, they want to give you a free bottle of their product.
To be entered all you’ve got to do is go to Exclusiv’s Facebook page at Facebook.com/ExclusivVodka. From there, be sure to “Like” their product, and then tag yourself with Exclusiv and the phrase “Aaron Torres Sports Podcast.” Do that, and you’ll be automatically entered to win a free bottle.
Thanks again to Barrett, and thank you all for listening.
Until next time!
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