Day 2: Big 12 Football Media Days
The Big 12 Conference's football media days take over the third floor of the Omni Dallas Hotel.
photo by: Benton Smith
The Big 12 Conference's football media days take over the third floor of the Omni Dallas Hotel.
Update: 12:15 p.m. – By Benton Smith
The Oklahoman’s Berry Tramel did the math, and since Kansas State first hired coach Bill Snyder, the other programs in the Big 12 have had 48 coaches.
“When you hear stuff like that thrown out by people like us,” Tramel asked Snyder, “does that make you feel old and how do you sort of fight against the age thing and keep coaching at such a high?pressure, high?intensity job that you’ve got?”
Snyder’s response: “Well, I don’t pay much attention to what the turnover ratio is from one school to the next. And there’s a variety of different reasons.
“Sometimes people move on. The age factor, I can’t negotiate that. It is what it is.”
Added Snyder: “And I’m as old as time and that’s not going to change.”
Update: 12:05 p.m. – By Matt Tait
More from OU coach Bob Stoops real quick. I meant to ask KU coach Charlie Weis about this yesterday but it fell through the cracks of so many other questions and topics we needed to get to.
But the whole question about how the increased access to players in the summer has benefited the coaches is a good one. I’ll get to Weis and the KU coaches when camp begins, but here’s what Stoops had to say about the new rule which allowed coaches to have contact with players for 20 per week during the summer for the first time this year.
That 20 hours was free to be used for everything from film study to mandatory time in the weight room and actual drills and practice time.
“The new rule is great,” Stoops said. “In that you just keep players — we’r e so accountable to these young men through the summer and really year?round in what they’re able to do. Just the ability to be able to see them daily, to go into the weight room, put your arm around them, interact with them, motivate them, how is school going, that’s just the positive side of it just to have more interaction with them and to hopefully influence them in a positive way that way.
“So it hasn’t really affected or changed the way we’ve gone through our summer working out. Coach Schmidt won’t give me any more time. He uses it. It’s allowed us maybe an hour a week to go over some film study with the players. So that’s really helped the freshmen in particular, your new guys that have come in.
“And then the opportunity to watch them work out, and I’m really excited, the freshmen really look strong. Some of the key guys that everybody’s paying attention to really have been impressive in the summer and being able to handle the volume of our running and lifting and just a different level from high school and not everybody can handle it. And a lot of these guys really handled it well and looked to be in position to really affect this year.”
This 20 hours a week won’t drastically change the way players are coached or impact greatly how teams perform during the season, but this notion of interacting with the players almost year-round now is awfully important because, remember, a lot of these guys pick their schools based in large part on their relationship with the head coach and now they’re able to grow that relationship even more during a time of the year when the bullets aren’t flying and the stakes aren’t quite as high.
I’ll be interested to hear what kind of benefit the Jayhawks have gotten from this new rule, as well.
Update: 11:45 a.m. – By Matt Tait
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen was asked about his running back situation during his time on the podium and a potentially familiar name for KU fans came to the forefront.
Holgorsen said Dreamius Smith, a former KU commitment who signed with the Jayhawks but never made it to campus as an academic casualty, is at the top of the pile after racking up nearly 500 yards (494 on 103 carries) last season in a complementary role to Charles Sims.
Holgorsen said Smith, a Wichita Heights graduate, averaged nearly the same number of yards-per-carry as Sims (4.8) but simply did not get the same number of touches that Sims got.
Before landing at WVU, Smith, now a senior, spent two seasons at Butler Community College, where he was a 2012 All-KJCCC first-team selection and ran for 984 yards and 17 touchdowns as a sophomore.
Smith, at 5-foot-11, 216 pounds, is bigger and more of a bruising runner than Sims was but he doesn’t give up much in the way of speed or quickness.
Several people in the KU program were very excited about Smith when he committed to Kansas but, obviously, things never worked out for him in Lawrence. Hardly a surprise, though, that he’s gone on to do well in college after a standout prep career that included 3,288 yards and 54 touchdowns on 320 carries.
Update: 11:30 a.m. – By Benton Smith
West Virginia is entering its third season in the Big 12. The Mountaineers arrived in 2012 with a lot of excitement, coming off a 70-33 trouncing of Clemson in the Orange Bowl as their final act as a Big East team.
Coach Dana Holgorsen said, after a 4-8 season in 2013, WVU is in a very different place.
“The days of rolling through the Big East and being able to play in a BCS game are long gone,” the coach said.
photo by: Nick Krug
Kansas quarterback Montell Cozart pushes aside West Virginia safety Darwin Cook on a run during the first quarter on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013 at Memorial Stadium.
“We have not been dominant in the Big 12, obviously,” Holgorsen added.
West Virginia was the only Big 12 team to lose to Kansas in 2013.
Update: 10:50 a.m. – By Benton Smith
Former KU football coach Mark Mangino, who went 50-48 with the Jayhawks and led his team to a 3-1 bowl record, is back in the Big 12, at Iowa State.
Cyclones coach Paul Rhoads, who hired Mangino this offseason as the program’s offensive coordinator, said he reached out to the former Kansas coach because he has great respect for what Mangino has accomplished in the profession. In Rhoads’ first season at ISU, he coached against Mangino.
photo by: Kevin Anderson
Kansas Quarterback Todd Reesing (5) chats with coach Mark Mangino after scoring against Iowa State. Mangino praised his quarterback Monday, saying Reesing deserves to be in the conversation for the Heisman Trophy.
“He has a proven track record as a play-caller, a tough guy type of coach,” Rhoads said.
ISU, the head coach added, will play a spread offense, with three receivers and one running back, and use a no-huddle approach. All of that, Rhoads said, will be familiar to ISU fans. The change will be a different pace, with an offense that is simple to execute at a high rate of speed.
“That’s exactly what Mark brings to our offense,” Rhoads said.
Update: 10:30 a.m. – By Benton Smith
Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops stepped up first to the microphone this morning, and one of the first topics to come up was the fast-paced offenses of the Big 12. The Sooners have played that style for years and now the rest of the league has tried to replicate their success with the same approach.
Stoops said there isn’t much more OU can do to run its offense any faster. “But we’ll keep looking for ways,” he added.”
This offseason, Oklahooma became the new home for highly-touted wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham, who was dismissed from Missouri. Stoops said an appeal to allow Green-Beckham to play this season is being processed.
“A second chance at our place,” Stoops said, “could serve him well.”
Original post: 10 a.m. – By Benton Smith
Kansas University football coach Charlie Weis and Jayhawks Ben Heeney, Nick Harwell, Jimmay Mundine and Cassius Sendish left Dallas, site of the Big 12 media days, Monday after fielding hundreds of questions about the upcoming season.
But KUsports.com is still at the Dallas Omni Hotel for Day 2, and we’ll update you with any interesting nuggets that come up.
Today’s schedule kicks off with press conferences throughout the morning, featuring Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops, Iowa State’s Paul Rhoads, West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen, Kansas State’s Bill Snyder and first-year Texas coach Charlie Strong.
In the meantime, check out all of our KU coverage from Monday:
Blog: Big 12 media days Day 1 wrap-up
Audio: Charlie Weis at Big 12 media days
KU football notebook from Dallas: Weis won’t talk win total, Short update, roster tweaks and more
http://www2.kusports.com/videos/2014/jul/21/35923/
http://www2.kusports.com/videos/2014/jul/21/35922/
http://www2.kusports.com/videos/2014/jul/21/35921/