2020 Football, Game 3: The Citadel vs. Eastern Kentucky

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Sandlapper Spike

The Citadel vs. Eastern Kentucky, to be played at historic Johnson Hagood Stadium, with kickoff at 1:00 pm ET on September 26, 2020.

The game will be streamed on ESPN3. Kevin Fitzgerald will handle play-by-play, while Brandon McCladdie supplies the analysis.

The contest can be heard on radio via the various affiliates of The Citadel Sports Network. WQNT-1450 AM [audio link], originating in Charleston, will be the flagship station. 

Luke Mauro (the “Voice of the Bulldogs”) calls the action alongside analyst Lee Glaze. 

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The Citadel Sports Network — 2020 radio affiliates

Charleston: WQNT 1450 AM/92.1 FM/102.1 FM (Flagship)
Columbia: WQXL 1470 AM/100.7 FM
Sumter: WDXY 1240 AM/105.9 FM

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Links of interest:

– Game preview in The Post and Courier

– Game notes from The Citadel and Eastern Kentucky

– A home game like none other

– The SoCon isn’t playing football this fall

– Preview on The Citadel’s website

– Preview on Eastern Kentucky’s website

– Brent Thompson’s 9/21 press conference

– The Brent Thompson Show (9/23)

– There will be pods in the stands at Johnson Hagood Stadium on September 26. Yes, pods.

–  Eastern Kentucky vs. Marshall (WatchESPN video)

–  EKU is playing nine games in the fall and eschewing the spring, and it may have the right idea

–  Athlon Sports preview of the game

–  EKU student newspaper game preview

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I was not aware the radio broadcasts of The Citadel’s football games were available “on demand”, but that is in fact the case. Here they are. Link

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Obviously, things could have gone better for the Bulldogs in the first two games of the season. I think it is fair for fans to be mildly disappointed in the team’s play.

However, it hasn’t been a complete debacle (though at times in the first half against Clemson, it did seem like one). Quick observations, mostly of the “well, of course” variety:

  • Clemson is really good. Some of our defensive backs had good coverage and still got burned. I’m not going to worry about that, as this time next year Trevor Lawrence will probably be doing the same thing to NFL pro bowlers.
  • It’s tough to operate a run-intensive offense when you don’t have any experienced running backs.
  • That said, there is no excuse for all the pre-snap penalties. In two games, The Citadel has been called for 9 false starts and two delay-of-game infractions. I don’t care who you’re playing with or against, that’s way too many. The Bulldogs cannot afford those kinds of mistakes; they tend to short-circuit drives.
  • The defense has not played that badly, in my opinion. Tackling has been a little bit of an issue, but what the Bulldogs’ D really needs are more forced turnovers.
  • Special teams (one notable gaffe aside) have been okay. I thought Clemson should have been called for a penalty on its long punt return, but those are the breaks.
  • There were two occasions against Clemson that The Citadel elected to punt on 4th down, when I thought Brent Thompson should have gone for it. It wasn’t a big deal, but in a game like that, you should go for it whenever possible.

Oh, one other thing…

I applaud Thompson for not agreeing to shorten the game:

“We came here to play 60 minutes of football, and that’s what we were going to do,” Thompson said. “It didn’t matter whether I was going to get beat by 100 or get beat by 50. We were going to stand in there and play a full 60 minutes of football.

“They wanted to shorten (the quarters) to 10 minutes, but that’s not what we came here to do. That’s not what we’re about, that’s not what The Citadel is about, and I’m not going to cave in to that at all.”

Exactly right, coach. Exactly right.

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Eastern Kentucky is located in Richmond, Kentucky, a little over 500 miles from Charleston. The school was founded in 1906…or maybe 1874. It depends on how you look at it:

The Kentucky General Assembly of 1906 enacted legislation establishing the Eastern Kentucky State Normal School. Governor J.C. Beckham signed the bill into law on March 21, 1906. On May 7 of that year, the Normal School Commission, meeting in Louisville, selected the campus of the old Central University, founded in 1874 in Richmond, as the site of the new school. On June 2, 1906, Ruric Nevel Roark was chosen President of the Normal School and the training of teachers was begun.

Ruric Nevel Roark (now that’s a name) led the institution until 1909, when he died of brain cancer. He was succeeded as school president by his wife, Mary Creegan Roark, which was unusual for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that at the time, women did not have the right to vote.

The college became a four-year institution in 1925. It was renamed Eastern Kentucky University in 1966. There are currently a little over 13,000 undergraduates at EKU, along with more than 2,000 graduate students. Most of the students are ensconced on the main campus, a rural setting of about 900 acres.

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Eastern Kentucky was an early power in I-AA after the split of Division I football in 1978. The Colonels made four consecutive I-AA championship games between 1979 and 1982, winning two of them (the ’82 team finished 13-0).

The coach of those teams, and of many other EKU squads, was Roy Kidd, who won 314 games in a 39-year stint as head coach of the Colonels. While his later teams never quite reached the lofty heights of those outfits from the early 1980s, Kidd regularly won OVC titles and made NCAA appearances until the late 1990s. EKU finished with a winning record in each of his final 25 seasons as head coach.

After Kidd retired, he was succeeded by Danny Hope, who (like Kidd) was an alumnus of EKU. Hope won one conference title in five years before leaving to become (after a one-year wait) the head coach at Purdue.

The next coach charged with recreating the magic was Dean Hood, who spent seven years at Eastern Kentucky, winning two league crowns and making three NCAA trips. However, all three of those postseason appearances ended in the first round (in fact, EKU has not won a playoff game since 1994).

Following Hood (who is now the head coach at Murray State), Eastern Kentucky hired Mark Elder, who lasted four seasons. None of his teams reached the postseason, and his contract was not renewed after the 2019 campaign.

EKU’s new coach is Walt Wells, who previously served as an assistant at the school to both Kidd and Hood. This is Wells’ first head coaching job in a career that began in 1994 and has included stops at six universities and two high schools. For the last two seasons, Wells was a quality control assistant at Kentucky.

His specialty is the offensive line, as he coached the OL unit at EKU, New Mexico State, Western Kentucky, South Florida, and Tennessee. Wells played at Austin Peay before transferring to get his bachelor’s degree at Belmont.

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While The Citadel and Eastern Kentucky have never met on the gridiron, there was a time in the mid-1990s when some folks at EKU would have been willing to play the Bulldogs on an annual basis, because they were very interested in joining the Southern Conference. From an Associated Press story dated June 25, 1995:

…for most of [Eastern Kentucky’s] coaches, however, it’s time to make a turn to the Southern Conference.

“It’s time that Eastern probably takes a good, hard look at maybe getting in the Southern Conference,” said EKU coach Roy Kidd, adding that all its sports programs “should take a good look at the Southern Conference.”

Southern Conference officials visited EKU in the early 1990s to evaluate the school as a possible member.

Eastern Kentucky’s president at the time was Hanley Funderburk, who advocated reducing the scholarship limit in I-AA from 63 to 45. I think it is reasonable to suggest that Funderburk was not on the same page with many of the school’s coaches (including Kidd) on the subject of conference affiliation — and perhaps a few other things as well.

It appears that some of the coaches were also unhappy with the OVC adding schools to its membership that were “so far away” from Eastern Kentucky, including UT-Martin, Southeast Missouri State, and Eastern Illinois.

(It should be pointed out that all three of those schools are geographically closer to Eastern Kentucky than is The Citadel.)

At the time, the SoCon was at ten schools, but everyone in the conference knew that Marshall was ready to bolt as soon as it got a chance to move to I-A. That happened in 1997, but the league elected to focus more on basketball in adding new members, bringing in UNC-Greensboro (along with Wofford) and, a year later, College of Charleston.

I don’t know if EKU was still interested in affiliating with the SoCon by 1997 (Funderburk remained as president of the school until 1998). One thing that clearly did not change was the scholarship limit.

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In recent years, Eastern Kentucky angled for another conference affiliation. This time, however, the aim wasn’t the SoCon, but the Sun Belt. From an article in 2013:

In college football circles in the commonwealth, the scuttlebutt about Eastern Kentucky University in recent weeks has been rampant. Word is that Eastern, under its new president, Michael T. Benson, is considering moving its football program into the Football Bowl Sub-Division.

The rumors are true.

“There is some discussion of that,” EKU Athletics Director Mark Sandy…”It would be a big decision by our Board (of Regents) and president.”

Sandy said the idea of EKU joining Kentucky, Louisville and Western Kentucky in the FBS is not as simple as Eastern just deciding to make the move.

[…]”You can’t just decide you want to move your program up,” [Sandy] said. “You have to have a conference invite you. So, unless or until that happens, it’s just something we are taking a look at.”

Sandy mentioned the Sun Belt Conference — which Western is leaving after this school year to join Conference-USA — or the Mid-American Conference as possible FBS leagues that could be a good fit for EKU…

…WKU, Eastern’s historic rival, made the move in 2009. The success that Western, which made a bowl game last season and has now beaten UK two years in a row, has enjoyed has not gone unnoticed in Richmond.

“We’ve kind of kept our eyes on the things Western Kentucky has done,” Sandy said. “That is something that we’ve factored into our thinking.”

A move from the FCS to the FBS would require a significant financial investment by EKU into its football program. It would mean going from a level that allows 63 football scholarships to one where there are 85 such players. “There would also be a need to enhance our facilities, there’s no question about that,” Sandy said.

At this point, Sandy said its premature to attach any timetable to it if or when EKU will try to make a step up in football classification. “Too soon to tell,” he said. “It’s something we’re going to look at and see if we are a viable candidate.”

By 2014, Eastern Kentucky had decided it was definitely a viable FBS candidate, applying to join the Sun Belt that year. It applied the following year as well.

Even though the university is planning a campus-wide construction boom of over $200 million dollars, the Sun Belt had facility questions, leading EKU to revise [its proposal].

So EKU pitched a $10 million stadium renovation.

“If you were to look at our athletic facilities, not a lot has been done to them over the last two, three decades,” EKU President Michael Benson told SB Nation. “I think that was particularly noticeable with our football stadium, which, when it was built in the late 1960s, it was one of the biggest in I-AA football. The bones of it are probably pretty good. It doesn’t have any of the amenities that one expects to see at an FBS level.

“The input we got back from the Sun Belt was that we needed to focus on football, softball, and baseball. We’ve already done the improvements to our basketball facility, and now it’s a great arena.”

In the end, the Sun Belt chose Coastal Carolina over Eastern Kentucky. It appears EKU will be remaining in FCS for the foreseeable future. Coincidentally, Michael Benson resigned as president of the school, leaving at the beginning of this year. The director of athletics (who had been in that role since 2015) also resigned, departing in October of 2019.

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This season, Eastern Kentucky is playing nine football games and is not going to compete in the spring.

…the OVC gave its members permission to play up to four non-league games this fall while holding out hope of a conference football season in the spring of 2021.

EKU said thank you, but no thank you.

A founding member of the OVC, Eastern decided to go rogue on that league’s aspirations for spring football for three main reasons, [director of athletics Matt] Roan said.

First was concern about the health impact on players of playing back-to-back football seasons in one year.

“Even if you play only seven (games in the spring) and then you play 11 ‘next year,’ that’s 18 football games in a calendar year,” Roan said. “For us, there were some serious safety concerns.”

The second problem was the weather.

“Where we are located, spring football is really winter football, at least the front part of the schedule,” Roan said. “Well, we lack an indoor facility. We lack a lot of equipment and supplies to be able to effectively support our football student-athletes with playing games in January and February.”

The third issue was worry it would stretch Eastern’s athletics staff and facilities too thin.

“When you talk about the size of our staff, the infrastructure we have from a facilities standpoint, it’s great but it is not designed — from our training room to out sports performance center — to effectively provide services for all 16 of our teams in one semester,” Roan said.

Moving forward, one wonders if Eastern going its own way with its 2020 football schedule will weaken the bonds of affection between the university and the OVC.

“I’m not naive enough to say that there is probably not some frustration (within the league),” Roan said. “I think, peer to peer, as I have talked with some of the OVC ADs, I think they kind of appreciate that what we did wasn’t a decision done in haste.”

Start with the FBS road games at Marshall, West Virginia and Troy. Roan said EKU will reap roughly $1 million in combined guarantee money from those three contests.

Frankly, I think all three of Roan’s major concerns are legitimate (two of them would also apply to The Citadel). I believe spring football is still a very dicey proposition at best. I hope it works out for all the schools that are counting on it, but I have serious reservations.

What Eastern Kentucky is doing makes a lot of sense. It is quite possible that EKU will be in better position for a “normal” 2021 fall campaign (in all of its sports) than most other schools.

It seems that Mike Capaccio, AD at The Citadel, largely agrees:

“To be honest, they may have the right model,” Capaccio said. “I think it’s important to play as many games as you can in the fall. We would have liked to play more, because I have no faith about playing in the spring.

“You are talking about playing everyone of our sports in the spring in one semester, and trying to manage the logistics of that. I never thought it was possible and was never in agreement with that.”

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Coming off a bye week, Eastern Kentucky is 0-2 this season after road losses to Marshall (59-0) and West Virginia (56-10). After playing The Citadel, the remainder of the Colonels’ schedule includes one more FBS opponent (Troy), home games against Western Carolina, Stephen F. Austin, and Houston Baptist, and a home-and-home with Central Arkansas.

The matchup with Houston Baptist (which is next weekend) was just scheduled last Wednesday.

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One of the many aspects of playing college football in a COVID-19 world is that you are never sure which players will appear in a game (or if the game will be played, for that matter). Because of that, I’m only going to highlight a limited number of players for EKU.

Parker McKinney (6’2″, 208 lbs.) is the starting quarterback for Eastern Kentucky. McKinney, a redshirt sophomore from Coalfield, Tennessee, has completed 56.3% of his passes during his career, averaging 6.57 yards per attempt, with 12 TDs and 12 interceptions. He will occasionally run the football, averaging just over 7 carries per game (that includes sacks, however).

The Colonels had two preseason OVC all-conference selections. One of them was running back Alonzo Booth (6’1″, 250 lbs.), a wrecking ball of a back from Columbus, Ohio.

Booth, a redshirt junior, rushed for 14 touchdowns last season.

Keyion Dixon (6’3″, 185 lbs.), a transfer from Connecticut, has six receptions this season, including a TD catch against West Virginia. The redshirt senior is one of the “big wide receivers” referenced by Brent Thompson during his press conference on Monday.

EKU’s projected starters on the offensive line average 6’4″, 289 lbs. Right tackle Tucker Schroeder (6’4″, 295 lbs.) was a preseason all-league pick. The native of St. Cloud, Florida is a redshirt junior who has started 25 consecutive games for EKU.

Matthew Jackson (6’2″, 205 lbs.) is a redshirt junior linebacker from Nashville who had 12 tackles versus Marshall.

Free safety Daulson Fitzpatrick (6’1″, 193 lbs.), a junior from Akron, has started 14 consecutive games for the Colonels, while cornerback Josh Hayes (6’0″, 185 lbs.) has started 12 games over the last two seasons. Hayes is a redshirt senior from Indianapolis who began his collegiate career at Purdue.

Placekicker Alexander Woznick (5’11”, 165 lbs.) is a graduate transfer from South Carolina who is 1 for 2 on field goal tries through two games at EKU, making a 32-yarder against West Virginia. His miss was a 54-yard try versus Marshall that went wide right.

Woznick played his high school football at Eastside High School in Taylors, South Carolina.

Eastern Kentucky has a fairly lengthy history with Australian punters. EKU has had an Aussie on its roster in every season since 2009 (one of them, Jordan Berry, had been the Pittsburgh Steelers’ punter for the past five seasons; he was released two weeks ago).

Last season, Phillip Richards (6’4″, 215 lbs.), a junior from Mount Dandenong in Victoria, Australia, was the regular punter for the Colonels, continuing that tradition with kickers from Down Under. However, he has been supplanted this year by a grad transfer from Limestone, Thomas Cook (5’9″, 193 lbs.). Cook, who went to Byrnes High School, has punted 11 times so far this season, averaging 40.5 yards per punt, with a long boot of 59.

Kickoff returner Quentin Pringle (5’9″, 178 lbs.), a sophomore from Bolingbrook, Illinois, averaged 27.1 yards per kick return last season, which was eighth-best in FCS. Pringle is also a running back who had a 23-yard rush in the Colonels’ season opener at Marshall.

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Odds and ends:

– The weather forecast for Saturday in Charleston, per the National Weather Service: a 40% chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high of 83 degrees.

– Per one source that deals in such matters, The Citadel is a 10-point favorite over Eastern Kentucky. The over/under is 48½.

– Other lines of note this week (as of September 22): Appalachian State is a 35½-point favorite over Campbell; UCF is a 27½-point favorite at East Carolina; Louisiana-Lafayette is a 14-point favorite over Georgia Southern; Auburn is a 7½-point favorite over Kentucky; Oklahoma State is an 8-point favorite over West Virginia; Cincinnati is a 14-point favorite over Army; Georgia is a 26-point favorite at Arkansas; Alabama is a 27-point favorite at Missouri; Miami (FL) is a 11½-point favorite over Florida State; and Tennessee is a 3½-point favorite at South Carolina.

Clemson is off this week, a much-needed break for the Tigers.

– Massey Ratings

Massey projects the Cadets to have a 70% chance of winning on Saturday, with a predicted final score of The Citadel 28, Eastern Kentucky 21.

Of the 127 schools in FCS, fifteen will play at least one game in the fall. Massey’s rankings (in FCS) for each of them, as of September 22:

North Dakota State (1st), Central Arkansas (26th), Missouri State (41st), The Citadel (48th, down one spot from last week), Austin Peay (51st), Chattanooga (52nd), Jacksonville State (54th), Abilene Christian (58th), Mercer (64th), Stephen F. Austin (69th), Houston Baptist (70th), Eastern Kentucky (72nd), Western Carolina (76th), North Alabama (86th), Campbell (88th).

– Massey’s FBS rankings (as of September 21) for some of the teams actually playing this fall (now including the Big 10): LSU (1st), Ohio State (2nd), Clemson (3rd), Alabama (4th), Georgia (5th), Notre Dame (6th), Auburn (7th), Penn State (9th), Oklahoma (11th), Florida (12th), Texas (13th), Texas A&M (17th), Minnesota (18th), UCF (19th), Kentucky (24th), North Carolina (26th), South Carolina (29th), Nebraska (32nd), BYU (37th), Tennessee (38th), Northwestern (42nd), West Virginia (44th), Louisiana-Lafayette (50th), North Carolina State (54th), Navy (57th), Army (61st), Georgia Tech (64th), Louisville (66th), Wake Forest (67th), Marshall (73rd), Florida State (80th), Appalachian State (82nd), Rutgers (85th), Coastal Carolina (94th), Liberty (98th), USF (101st), Kansas (104th), Georgia Southern (108th), Charlotte (116th), North Texas (119th), UTEP (130th).

There are 130 FBS teams.

– Eastern Kentucky’s notable alumni include Hall of Fame outfielder Earle Combs, health scientist Eula Bingham, and Lee Majors — a/k/a “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

– The Colonels have made 21 appearances in I-AA/FCS postseason play. Only Montana (24) has made more trips to the FCS playoffs.

– EKU’s roster (as of September 22) includes 33 players from the state of Kentucky. Other states represented: Ohio (22 players), Florida (11), Georgia (11), Tennessee (9), Michigan (4), Alabama (3), California (3), Illinois (3), South Carolina (3), North Carolina (2), and one each from Connecticut, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.

As noted above, punter Phillip Richards is from Australia.

Unfortunately for Eastern Kentucky, no Colonel is an alumnus of the Palmetto State’s premier pigskin powerhouse, Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School. It is hard to imagine EKU returning to the summit of FCS without any members of the famed maroon and orange around to lead the way.

One of the three South Carolina natives on Eastern Kentucky’s roster, redshirt freshman defensive lineman P.J. White Jr. (6’5″, 200 lbs.), has Orangeburg, S.C., listed as his hometown. However, he played his high school football in Warner Robins, Georgia. White clearly has O’burg connections, though (his cousin is former O-W, UGA and NFL cornerback Tim Jennings).

– The Citadel’s geographic roster breakdown (per the school’s website) is as follows: South Carolina (59 players), Georgia (19), Florida (10), North Carolina (7), Virginia (4), Texas (3), Alabama (2), Oklahoma (2), Tennessee (2), Pennsylvania (2), and one each from Kentucky, Ohio, Nebraska, and New York.

Defensive lineman Hayden Williamson played his high school football in Okinawa, Japan.

– The Citadel has an all-time record of 6-7 for games played on September 26. The Bulldogs are 4-2 on that date in contests played in Charleston. Among the highlights:

  • 1925: The Citadel defeated the Parris Island Marines at Hampton Park, 7-0. The game’s only touchdown came on a pass from Teddy Weeks to the man known as ‘The Sumter Comet’, Stanley “Rebo” Weinberg. Weeks added the PAT. The Bulldogs’ D held firm throughout, thanks to a tough line which included Joe Matthews, Ephraim Seabrook, and K.P. “Sheik” Westmoreland.
  • 1936: At the original Johnson Hagood Stadium, The Citadel stopped Erskine, 13-6. Chet Smith and Kooksie Robinson both scored touchdowns for the Bulldogs, with Robinson adding the PAT after Smith’s TD. Orville Rogers and Archie Jenkins starred on a defense that held the Seceders to just one first down; Jenkins’ exploits included blocking a punt that set up The Citadel’s first touchdown.
  • 1970: Bob Duncan rushed for 199 and two touchdowns as The Citadel shut out East Carolina, 31-0, before 17,420 fans at Johnson Hagood Stadium. Ben Chavis and Jon Hall also scored TDs for The Citadel, and Jim Leber converted all four PATs and a 27-yard field goal try. Defensively, the Bulldogs were led by a strong pass rush (ECU was 13-42 passing), with the front four — Tommy Utsey, Don Cox, Norman Seabrooks, and Charlie Kerr — drawing particular praise from head coach Red Parker. The Bulldogs forced several turnovers, including a fumble recovered by Jeff Martin and an interception by Charlie Baker.
  • 1981: In front of 17,250 spectators and before a regional TV audience, The Citadel outscored Appalachian State, 34-20. The only football game ever played by The Citadel to be referenced in a judicial opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court, the contest featured a star performance by the Bulldogs’ Danny Miller, who scored 4 TDs while rushing for 182 yards. Byron Walker took a punt back 70 yards for The Citadel’s other touchdown. The defense made plays when it had to down the stretch, including key interceptions by Kelly Curry and Hillery Douglas in the fourth quarter. Earlier in the game, Prince Collins had also picked off a Mountaineers’ pass. Incidentally, the television announcers were Chris Lincoln (perhaps best known for his horse racing coverage) and Russ Francis (who had just retired from the NFL; the Pro Bowl tight end would then unretire after the season to play for the San Francisco 49ers, foreshadowing a similar move by Jason Witten four decades later).
  • 1992: From Ken Burger’s column in The Post and Courier after The Citadel’s 15-14 win at Army: “[H]ere in the rolling Ramapo mountains where names like McArthur and Eisenhower and Patton trained, Charlie Taaffe and his Citadel Bulldogs beat Army for the second straight year on the field where Taaffe took his basic training for what could be the greatest era of football the military school has known.” Everette Sands rushed for 174 yards and a TD, while C.J. Haynes replaced an injured Jack Douglas in the third quarter and proceeded to complete all seven of his pass attempts, leading two scoring drives. Cedric Sims scored The Citadel’s second touchdown, while Jeff Trinh’s 37-yard field goal (set up by two huge pass completions from Haynes to Cornell Caldwell) gave the Bulldogs the lead for good. An ensuing Army drive was scuttled by a fumble that was recovered by Mike Wideman. For the sixth time in seven tries, The Citadel defeated a I-A opponent.
  • 2009: The Citadel caught fire in the second half to get by Presbyterian, 46-21. Andre Roberts caught 12 passes for 184 yards and 4 touchdowns, all from Bart Blanchard — who threw 6 TD passes in all, tying a school record. His other two touchdown tosses went to Alex Sellars. Cortez Allen and Keith Gamble both intercepted passes, with Gamble returning his pick 89 yards for a score — the fourth-longest in Bulldogs history. (Tangent: the third-longest in school annals, 92 yards, belongs to Brandon McCladdie, who is the analyst for this Saturday’s ESPN3 broadcast.)

Note: The Citadel’s 32-0 victory over Camp Davis in 1942, listed in the school record book as having been played on September 26, was actually played on Friday, September 25.

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I’m glad The Citadel is playing at home this week. The players deserve at least one fall game at Johnson Hagood Stadium, and a chance to play in front of friends and family (and some of their loyal fans, too). It won’t be the same atmosphere, but you have to take what you can get.

It should be a good game. Both teams will be looking to win this contest, and I expect the energy level on Saturday to be very high.

There is not much more that I can add. I will not be in the stands myself, as it simply would not be in my best interests to attend. C’est la vie.

I’ll be watching on ESPN3 and listening to the radio call and following the statistical play-by-play online, however. (Yes, all of those things — that’s how I roll.)

Go Dogs!

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Conference realignment, SoCon style: history repeats itself

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Sandlapper Spike

Everyone knows that the Southern Conference has been through a lot of membership changes over the years, with two splits of particular note leading to the formation of the SEC (in 1932) and ACC (1953). However, there have been other moves of consequence since then, and a few of those are instructive when looking at the current SoCon landscape.

This post is just an overview of some of those machinations. Not all of them, though. That would take up way too much bandwidth…

Tangent: linked above is a 1953 article on the newly formed ACC, which noted that Virginia and West Virginia were “running a neck and neck race” for the eighth spot in the league. UVA won that contest, much to the displeasure of certain WVU bloggers who had been confidently tweeting about WVU’s inevitable invite, despite the fact that Twitter had not yet been created and they had not yet been born.

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When it comes to movement among SoCon schools over the last four decades, there have been two major themes:

– Davidson’s skittishness

– Longtime CAA commissioner Tom Yeager’s occasional, grandiose attempts to break up the SoCon

First up, the Wildcats.

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The league lost four more members in the seventeen years after the ACC schools made their exit. Washington and Lee departed in 1958, Virginia Tech left in 1965, and West Virginia finally moved out of the conference in 1968.  George Washington dropped out in 1970.

Once the Colonials had left the league, that meant Davidson and VMI were the only two schools remaining in the SoCon that had ever won the conference’s men’s basketball tournament, then and now the nation’s oldest. Perhaps Davidson took this as a sign to start making moves of its own, or maybe those moves would have happened anyway.

At any rate, from that point forward Davidson has been the league’s femme fatale, always a doubt, sometimes leaving, sometimes staying, once actually gone, then suddenly back.

In 1969, Davidson’s football team, led by the estimable Homer Smith, went 7-4 and won the Southern Conference. The Wildcats played in the Tangerine Bowl.

By February 1970, Smith was gone, resigning after the school’s board of trustees decided to cut his budget by almost half. Then in 1973, Davidson decided to de-emphasize football by eliminating football scholarships.  In a move that reporter John Kilgo described as “bush league style”, the school administration notified the press before telling the AD, football coach, or the players. (Kilgo would later become the Wildcats’ radio play-by-play announcer for basketball.)

Davidson’s decision to get out of the scholarship football business didn’t go over very well with some of the other league members, but by then there were other issues too. The looming I-A/I-AA split was one of them. It was a key factor in East Carolina and Richmond leaving the SoCon, and Richmond’s departure also led to William & Mary and VMI leaving — but then the folks in Lexington changed their minds, and VMI stayed.

Both Richmond and ECU wanted to remain at the I-A level, as did William & Mary, and those schools were concerned that the SoCon’s recent or inevitable additions of Appalachian State, Western Carolina, UT-Chattanooga, and Marshall would result in the league becoming a I-AA conference. (Another school that had been interested in joining the league, James Madison, was not seriously considered.)

The departing schools tried to form a new “Big Conference“, which would have included Richmond, East Carolina, William & Mary, VMI, Southern Mississippi, and South Carolina. They were hoping to add two or more of Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Florida State. It didn’t work out (FSU soon wound up in another new league, the Metro).

Of those schools that left the Southern Conference, only ECU would remain in the subdivision now called FBS.

Then Davidson decided to leave the SoCon, effective July 1, 1977. The school stated that it wanted “to associate with an athletic conference offering national-level competition in basketball.” Sound familiar?

However, the school changed its mind in February of 1977 and decided to stay.

By now the league had two “established” schools (The Citadel and Furman), one recent entrant (Appalachian State), three other new schools (WCU, UTC, and Marshall), and two other schools that had been in the league for a long time but had considered leaving (Davidson and VMI).

It didn’t take that long for Davidson to shake things up again in the SoCon. In 1985, the school decided to join the new Colonial League (later renamed the Patriot League) for football. The rest of the Southern Conference schools, however, turned down Davidson’s request to remain in the SoCon for its other sports. Davidson then left the league in 1988.

Tangent: in another article around that time, it was mentioned that the Southern Conference’s constitution “limits membership to 12 institutions”. I thought that was interesting.

By the following year, though, there were Davidson-back-to-the-SoCon rumblings. That was because Marshall was already making noises about leaving the league (though that didn’t happen until 1997). Among the schools reportedly in the mix at that time: Richmond, James Madison, and William & Mary (all as football-only members, a concept the conference ultimately rejected), Eastern Kentucky (which was still on the SoCon radar six years later), and Liberty.

Eventually, Davidson would be brought back into the league (sans football) in 1992.

Now in the space of two years, Davidson has turned down the CAA and is seriously considering the Atlantic 10. There is nothing new under the sun.

—

Tom Yeager’s first known attempt to punch a gaping hole in the SoCon came in 1996. At the time, the CAA did not sponsor football. Yeager was intent on changing that, and in a big way. The CAA apparently tried to entice The Citadel, Furman, VMI, and Davidson (yes, despite its football situation) to join a league that would have also included Richmond, William & Mary, and James Madison.

That didn’t happen. Neither did a potential 12-team SoCon football league.

Not on the CAA wish list in 1996: Georgia Southern, which had joined the Southern Conference in 1992. Five years earlier, a SoCon spokesman had suggested that GSU was “a little bit beyond the fringe geographically” to become a league member. However, a little-known shift in a continental tectonic plate moved Statesboro significantly closer to conference headquarters, and Georgia Southern was eventually invited.

Yeager came back with a vengeance in 2000, and this time he had an even bigger idea. The CAA went after no fewer than seven Southern Conference schools: VMI, Furman, The Citadel, Davidson, Wofford (which had joined the SoCon in 1997), UNC-Greensboro (which had also joined the conference in 1997), and the College of Charleston (a SoCon member since 1998). The CAA would have been a fourteen-member league, with eight of those schools playing football.

The gambit failed when Richmond stunned the CAA in May by moving to the Atlantic 10. In the wake of UR’s departure, the SoCon invited JMU and William & Mary to join. However, those schools elected to stay in the Atlantic 10 for football. Eventually, the Atlantic 10 football schools would all fall under the CAA umbrella (though that didn’t officially happen until 2007).

At the same time the SoCon was extending invites to JMU and William & Mary, the CAA offered VMI a spot in its league. VMI (second only to Davidson in its league identity issues) decided to stay, but was out of the SoCon three years later. Now, of course, it is a leading candidate to return to the league.

Last year, Yeager and the CAA attempted to grab three SoCon members: Appalachian State (which obviously had FBS aspirations instead), the College of Charleston (which jumped) and Davidson (which said thanks but no thanks). In 2013, internet rumors continue to swirl about various SoCon-to-CAA transfers, from the prosaic (Elon and only Elon) to the fanciful (the fabled “expanded CAA southern division”).

—

We’ll see what happens — or doesn’t happen. With the SoCon, something usually happens.

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Football, Game 6: The Citadel vs. Chattanooga

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Sandlapper Spike

I’ll begin this post with what may become an annual riff on UTC nomenclature.  As I noted last year, trying to determine what to call the athletic teams of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga isn’t the simplest thing in the world to do:

Recently the school began using a ‘C’ mark, for “Chattanooga”.  The university’s teams have variously been referred to over the years as “UT-Chattanooga”, “Tennessee-Chattanooga”, “UTC”, and “Chattanooga”.

The nickname/mascot history is even more tangled.  A “moccasin” used to be a snake, then a shoe, then a cartoon Cherokee Indian called ‘Chief Moccanooga’, and now a mockingbird train conductor (and “moccasin” has morphed into “moc”, for mockingbird).

There is an explanatory page on the school’s website detailing some of the nickname history.

I’ve actually made a change from last year in how I am referring to the school.  While the school itself is still called the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, it is now consistently calling its athletic teams “Chattanooga” while still using the “UTC” acronym.  Therefore, I’ll drop the “UT-Chattanooga” usage.

Irrelevant but semi-interesting:  while surfing UTC’s website (the main one, not the athletics site) I found out that UTC was actually a private school until 1969, when it merged with the University of Tennessee.  Between 1889 and 1907, it was called U.S. Grant University.

—

Both UTC and The Citadel have had football programs that have been in the doldrums for a decade or more.  However, the Mocs appear poised to finally move up the ladder in the Southern Conference, under the direction of Russ Huesman.  Huesman inherited a program that had gone 1-11 in the year before he arrived.  In 2009, his first year at the helm, the Mocs improved to 6-5.

This season Chattanooga is 2-2, after losing its first two games to Appalachian State and Jacksonville State, both currently ranked in the FCS Top 5.  The Mocs rebounded with victories over Eastern Kentucky and Western Carolina, the latter game played in Cullowhee.

Those two losses may have excited the UTC fan base more than the two wins, as both were close games against quality opponents.  Chattanooga led Appalachian State 28-7 at halftime before the Mountaineers scored 28 fourth-quarter points to take a 7-point lead.  The Mocs scored what would have been the tying touchdown with under a minute to play, but Huesman elected to go for two.  It didn’t work, and Appalachian State escaped Finley Stadium with a victory.

Chattanooga also led Jacksonville State 17-7 entering the fourth quarter, only for the Gamecocks to respond with 14 fourth-quarter points.  JSU’s game-winning TD came on a 72-yard pass play with 1:16 remaining.  That game, played in Alabama, came one week after Jacksonville State’s stunning win over Mississippi.

UTC’s 42-24 victory over EKU included 548 yards of total offense, including 375 yards passing (4 TDs) from B.J. Coleman and 122 yards rushing from Erroll Wynn.

Against Western Carolina, the Mocs turned the ball over four times, one of those being a fumble returned for a touchdown (Chattanooga lost three fumbles overall).  UTC was also burned by a wide receiver pass for a TD, but prevailed 27-21 in part because the Mocs D forced four turnovers of its own.

Speaking of Coleman (a transfer from Tennessee), you may remember him from last year’s game, in which The Citadel blew a 15-point lead.  During the UTC rally, the Mocs went to a no-huddle offense, and the Bulldogs never stopped it, despite the fact Chattanooga could not run the ball.  Coleman somehow threw 61 passes without being sacked, and was only “hurried” once.

Obviously, The Citadel has to turn that around on Saturday, but it won’t be easy.  For one thing, UTC appears to actually have a running game now, with senior Erroll Wynn averaging exactly 100 yards per game in three games (he didn’t play against App State).  That should take a lot of pressure off Coleman, who is averaging almost nine yards per pass attempt and has thrown 10 TD passes (against only 3 interceptions).

Chattanooga doesn’t seem to be missing Coleman’s main target from last season, Blue Cooper, all that much, as Joel Bradford has already caught 30 passes and is averaging over 126 yards receiving per game (nearly 17 yards per reception). Bradford is also a fine punt returner.

Other than the fourth-quarter problems against Appy and JSU, the Mocs D has played well, holding both EKU and WCU to less than 60 yards rushing and forcing eleven turnovers in its last three games, including nine interceptions.  Four of the picks were made by freshman Kadeem Wise.

Defensive end Chris Donald is another Tennessee transfer making an impact for the Mocs.  He has 4.5 sacks so far this season.  UTC is currently ninth in the country against the run.  One reason for that is linebacker Ryan Consiglio, who is averaging almost eleven tackles per game.

—

You may have seen Jeff Hartsell’s breakdown of The Citadel’s recent recruiting classes on “Bulldog Bites”.  Just for comparison, here is the two-deep from The Citadel’s playoff game against North Carolina A&T in 1992.  I could be wrong about a couple of these guys, but I should have most of this right.  The number by a player’s name is the year he entered The Citadel (for instance, Jack Douglas entered in the fall of 1988, hence “88”).

QB — Jack Douglas (88) and CJ Haynes (90)

FB — Everette Sands (89) and Travis Jervey (91)

LHB — Erick Little (90) and Terrance Rivers (90)

RHB — Cedric Sims (89) and Undra Mitchem (90)

TE — Marty Fagan (88) and Greg Perry (89, and originally a walk-on)

WR — Cornell Caldwell (89) and Damond Boatwright (90)

LT — David Morelli (88) and Doug Cobarras (89)

LG — Shayne Stephens (89) and Levi Davis (90)

C — Brett Copeland (88) and Bart Hearn (91 walk-on, I think)

RG — Lance Hansen (88) and Scott Reagan (89)

RT — Carey Cash (88) and Mike Wilkerson (91)

PK — Jeff Trinh (91)

DE — Garrett Sizer (89) and Ed McFarland (89, and originally a walk-on)

DE — Judson Boehmer (89) and Brad Keeney (92)

RT — LaQuincy Powell  (89, and yet another walk-on from that class), Todd Lair (91, maybe a walkon; not sure)

LT — Jake Erhard (89) and Lenny Clark (91)

LB — Micah Young (91) and Jim Wilson (88)

LB — Rob Briggs (89) and Tracey Gamble (90)

LB — Mike Wideman (89) and Kendall McKnight (90)

LCB — Torrency Forney (89) and Chauncey Chappelle (92)

RCB — Detric Cummings (90) and Corey Gay (90)

SS — Dan Johnson (89) and Ahren Self (91)

FS — Lester Smith (88) and Speizio Stowers (89)

P — Eric Willingham (88)

The return specialists were all part of the offense-defense two-deep.  Sizer was the long snapper.

46 players —

9 fifth-year seniors (including Douglas, Smith, and Cash)

17 players from the ’89 recruiting class, including three walk-ons

10 from the ’90 recruiting class

8 from the ’91 recruiting class

2 “true” freshmen

—

One quick note on the above:  the 1991 recruiting class was actually rather thin; only two other scholarship members of that class would contribute in future seasons. Whether that “lost class” was a key factor in the eventual decline in The Citadel’s gridiron fortunes is hard to say, although it certainly didn’t help.

—

I had plenty to say about the loss to Western Carolina last week, and about some things that rather obviously need to improve.  I’ll add a little to what I already mentioned, and note a couple of other things:

— I was glad to see that Kevin Higgins acknowledged the poor play of the secondary against WCU (you can read about his press conference here and here).  Watching the lack of ball awareness was excruciating.

— He also addressed game-planning for opposing defenses, explaining what he feels the issues are.  I suspect that this wouldn’t be as big a problem if the Bulldogs were in Year 3 or Year 4 of the triple option.

Teams that have run an option attack for a long time, like Navy or Air Force or Wofford, generally force the opponents to adjust to them, not the other way around.  That’s because their players have been in the system long enough to recognize different defensive looks, and understand basically (if not always specifically) what each person’s job is when facing a certain setup.

Having said that, I was a little concerned that Higgins seemed confident in what Russ Huesman’s defense will probably do on Saturday.  He’s basing that on what Huesman has done in the past against the option, but the Mocs have had a week off and presumably a lot more time to put in new things.  What if UTC comes out in a defensive formation for which the Bulldogs aren’t prepared?  Another lost half for The Citadel’s offense?

— Amidst all the talk about changing quarterbacks, his decision to change placekickers has seemingly gone under the radar.

— About those quarterbacks…

I’ll be honest.  I don’t care which quarterback starts.  If Higgins thinks Sam Martin starting might jump-start the team in the opening quarter, then by all means run him out there.  The bottom line is that both Martin and Matt Thompson are going to play, and they’re both going to play about the same number of plays — at least, that’s the plan.

Martin has looked more comfortable in the offense than Thompson, but he hasn’t been that much better.  We’re not talking about the second coming of a healthy Jamelle Holieway here.  At this point, we don’t know if we’re talking about the second coming of a healthy Brendan Potts (which would be okay by me).

Neither Martin nor Thompson has mastered the center/QB exchange (to be fair, neither have the centers).  Thompson seems to still struggle with the “mesh”, and should also heed the advice of John Wooden — be quick but don’t hurry.  However, he’s a true freshman with some obvious talent, and he deserves a chance to show what he can do (as does Martin).  This is, as I’ve said before, a transition season, although not everyone seems to understand that.

While leaving the stadium on Saturday after the WCU game, I overheard a Bulldog fan say, in a non-ironic way, that the loss to the Catamounts meant “we won’t go to the playoffs now.”  You don’t say…

—

One thing both quarterbacks must improve (and for that matter, their receiving corps): the Bulldogs currently have a pass completion rate of 35.4%.  While The Citadel doesn’t throw the ball a lot in this offense, it has to do better than that.  Completing less than 36% of your pass attempts is just horrendous.  If that percentage holds up, it would be the lowest completion percentage for a Bulldog squad since 1965.  Care to guess how many games that 1965 team won?

Two.

—

The Bulldogs will be Underdogs on Saturday, and deservedly so.  However, I’ll close this post by pointing out that there is hope for the game against UTC:

1)  Chattanooga, while improved, hasn’t really proven that it’s made a move to the next level in the Southern Conference, at least not yet.  Those two games against Appalachian State and Jacksonville State were both impressive in a lot of ways, but they were also both losses.  Last year The Citadel also lost a close game to Appalachian State at home, in overtime.  It did not lead to a winning season.

I’m not quite ready to buy stock in a team which to this point in the season has only beaten Eastern Kentucky (which has just one win on the season) and Western Carolina.

2)  The Bulldog offense may continue to struggle, but I find it hard to believe that the defense (particularly the DBs) will have two consecutive clunkers.  I think there is a lot of talent on that side of the ball, and sometime (hopefully soon) it will begin to show. Also, there is something to be said for regression to the mean.

We’ll find out Saturday.

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Football, Game 10: The Citadel vs. UT-Chattanooga

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Sandlapper Spike

Note:  it can be difficult to figure out what to call the athletic teams of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  Recently the school began using a ‘C’ mark, for “Chattanooga”.  The university’s teams have variously been referred to over the years as “UT-Chattanooga”, “Tennessee-Chattanooga”, “UTC”, and “Chattanooga”.

The nickname/mascot history is even more tangled.  A “moccasin” used to be a snake, then a shoe, then a cartoon Cherokee Indian called ‘Chief Moccanooga’, and now a mockingbird train conductor (and “moccasin” has morphed into “moc”, for mockingbird).

There is an explanatory page on the school’s website.  The page includes a quotation from Jimmy Fallon.  As you may have guessed, the quote is not very funny.

In the post that follows, I will call the school either “UT-Chattanooga”, or “UTC”, because that’s what I’ve always called it, and I see no particular reason to change.

—

Around this time last year The Citadel played UT-Chattanooga in Charleston.  It was Homecoming for the Bulldogs, and everyone expected a big win, since the Mocs were 1-9 (and would eventually finish 1-11).  At that time I wrote about how UTC had collapsed as a program after consistently challenging for league honors in its first 10-15 years in the Southern Conference.

Well, The Citadel did win that day, but barely, letting a team playing out the string with a lame-duck coach hang around and nearly steal the victory.  The Bulldogs survived thanks to Andre Roberts’ last-minute punt return TD, but despite winning the game, it was almost as poor a showing as The Citadel had for this year’s Homecoming.

UT-Chattanooga replaced Rodney Allison with Russ Huesman, who basically has the ideal background for a UTC head coach.  Huesman played high school football at famed Moeller High School in Cincinnati for Gerry Faust, who was destined to become a much-maligned coach for Notre Dame (albeit one who never lost to Navy).  Huesman then played college football for the Mocs, with his first two years under Joe Morrison and his last two under Bill “Brother” Oliver.

Huesman was a longtime assistant at William & Mary, where he coached the secondary (Huesman was a DB himself at UTC) and was later the defensive coordinator.  Players he coached while with the Tribe include longtime NFL interception magnet Darren Sharper, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, and Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Sean McDermott.  That’s not a bad list of guys to have as references.

He then moved to Memphis for several seasons, including a stretch as recruiting coordinator for the Tigers, before spending five seasons as the defensive coordinator for Richmond, the defending FCS champions.

That’s a nice resume for any prospective head coach at the FCS level; being an alum is an even bigger bonus.  Huesman seems to have given the program some much-needed enthusiasm.  Home attendance has increased significantly, with three of the ten biggest crowds in Finley Stadium history so far this season.  There was even a bonfire on Wednesday night.

Another thing Huesman did was bring in a transfer from Tennessee to play quarterback.  B.J. Coleman has had a solid season for the Mocs, nothing flashy stats-wise but generally getting the job done.

Coleman has thrown fourteen touchdowns against six interceptions, although he did throw three picks last week against Appalachian State.  Five of his six interceptions for the season, in fact, have come in the last three games.  Coleman is a sophomore who will have two more years of eligibility after this season.

The Vols transfer has spread the ball around, although his favorite target is definitely Blue Cooper, who has 68 receptions and could conceivably make the All-SoCon squad ahead of Andre Roberts (Elon’s Terrell Hudgins is a lock for the other first-team spot at wide receiver).

UTC suffered a blow when running back Bryan Fitzgerald was injured and lost for the season.  Freshman Chris Awuah is the leading rusher for the Mocs, but he is averaging just 3.2 yards per carry.  UTC is last in the league in rushing offense.

UTC has respectable, if not eye-popping, defensive statistics across the board, generally ranking in the upper half of the SoCon in most categories for conference-only games.  The Mocs have struggled, however, in defending 3rd-down conversions; the Mocs D is 7th in the league (The Citadel is 8th in the league, ahead of only Furman).  Another sore spot for the defense is red zone conversion rate; UTC is last in the SoCon, and has allowed 17 touchdowns in 25 opponents’ possessions inside the 20.

The Mocs are tied for the lead in interceptions in conference play with eight; free safety Jordan Tippet has five of his own.

One defensive stat that is very impressive for UTC:  sacks.  The Mocs have 24 sacks on the season; their 16 sacks in league play in second-best in the conference.  The primary sack-master is right defensive end Josh Beard, who has 10.5 of them so far this year.  His partner in crime on the other side of the line, freshman DE Joshua Williams, has 6.

Despite the mediocre 3rd-down defense numbers and lack of a rushing game, UTC leads the league in time of possession.  The Mocs don’t hurt themselves with penalties (second in the SoCon).  UTC is next-to-last in net punting, but features an outstanding placekicker in Craig Camay, who is 13-16 converting field goals this year, with a long of 52.  Camay is also a weapon for onside kicks; the Mocs have recovered four of five onside kick attempts in league action.

—

A few other odds and ends:

— I was surprised to find out that The Citadel is UT-Chattanooga’s most common opponent.  Saturday’s game will be the 43rd meeting between the two schools.  The school in second place on the Mocs most-played list?  Tennessee, which has faced UTC on 41 occasions.  The Vols are 37-2-2 in those games.

— UTC is 5-4, but if it has dreams of a winning season, it probably needs to beat The Citadel.  Next week, the Mocs play Alabama.  Yikes.

Tangent:  what is with the SEC and these late-season matchups against FCS schools?  Last week, there were four such games:  Tennessee Tech-Georgia, Furman-Auburn, Northern Arizona-Mississippi, and Eastern Kentucky-Kentucky.

Last year, of course, The Citadel closed out its season by playing Florida.  Why aren’t these games being played in the first couple of weeks of the season? I hope all of them were Homecoming games.

— UTC’s game notes reference The Citadel’s football stadium (on the same page) as “Haggod Stadium” , “Johnson Hagood Stadium”, and “Sansom Field”.

— The Citadel has never won four straight games against UT-Chattanooga.  The Bulldogs currently enjoy a three-game winning streak versus the Mocs.

—

It’s hard to say what The Citadel’s chances on Saturday are, since it’s hard to determine which Bulldog team will show up — the one that played Appalachian State and Furman, or the one that played Elon, Western Carolina, and Wofford?

It will be interesting to see who starts at quarterback.  If I had to guess (and it’s only a guess), I would say that Miguel Starks, even if just “85%”, will get the nod.  Just the thought of a gimpy Bart Blanchard sitting in the pocket as the two sack-happy UTC defensive ends converge on him is cringe-inducing…

I certainly hope that the Bulldogs are more competitive than they were last week.  This is a big game for UTC, which has a chance for a winning season.  Given that the Mocs won a total of six games in the previous three years, that would be a major accomplishment.  UT-Chattanooga will be ready to play on Saturday.  The Bulldogs better be ready as well.

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