Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The first video footage of a giant squid in US waters is recorded. As amazing as this creature is in so many ways - I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed that a giant squid is just 12-feet long.

- Heh Heh

- Interesting profile of Ohio State strength and conditioning coach.

- Lincoln and the art of transformative leadership. (Long read)

- UConn leaving the ACC to return to the Big East. Move makes a lot of sense.

Dave Gavitt, the Big East, Holy Cross and the Road Not Taken

Yesterday Dave Gavitt, the founder of the Big East passed away. Yesterday the news broke that Syracuse and Pittsburgh will be leaving the Big East for the ACC. Yesterday Holy Cross beat Harvard in football 30-22. All of these stories are related.

If you are a sports fan from Worcester of a certain age - you know the story well. Dave Gavitt wants to form a new basketball league that will cash in on TV money and they want Holy Cross as one of their centerpiece schools. Father Brooks and the College of the Holy Cross say "No thanks."

Years later schools like Georgetown and St. John's are national powers and Holy Cross fans are asking "what if" questions.

Yesterday Dave Gavitt passed away and in a terribly cruel twist of fate the league he formed may have passed away with him. Syracuse and Pittsburgh leaving the Big East for the ACC became official this morning. All of which in my mind validates the wisdom of Father Brooks all those years ago.

Where would Holy Cross be today if they had joined the Big East? They would have had to have spent millions to upgrade the football program and to what end? The realist knows that football success in this day and age would not be possible. They can't draw athletes from a whole state or afford a modern stadium complete with luxury boxes like UConn. Holy Cross has an enrollment of just 2,900. Compare that to Villanova who has a student body of well over 7,000. A place like Notre Dame has an enrollment of around 8,500 and is actually considered small by the big-time college football movers and shakers. The cold, hard fact is that the student body at Holy Cross just could not support a big-time program. A BCS Holy Cross would be a joke Holy Cross. What benefit would come from Holy Cross getting whipped by TCU by 40 points? What benefit would that bring to the value of a Holy Cross degree?

People who still wish to believe that Holy Cross should have joined the Big East all those years ago will argue that the Crusaders could have been a basketball member of the Big East like Georgetown or Providence College. They would have a point. But where would that have left the football program which had an equally storied history as the basketball team? People forget that Holy Cross played in the Orange Bowl back when being in a Bowl really meant something. What about the football team? Do they try to exist in between worlds like Villanova? Do they drop the program - again like Villanova? Georgetown (enrollment over 9,000 undergrad and grad combined) didn't have football when the Big East was formed but they have since added a team to compete at the Holy Cross level which I would take as evidence that Holy Cross was doing things the right way.

People say that you are known by the company you keep - yesterday Holy Cross was associating with Harvard. They regularly associate with Ivy League schools and the reputations of the Patriot League schools are pretty much unblemished.

Today the Universities of the Big East are wondering what their future holds and how they could be so betrayed by "brother" institutions. Who is in the better situation?

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Wow - Christian Ponder the senior QB for Florida State already received both his undergrad and Master’s degrees. This fall he'll be working on a second Master's Degree... Maybe the veterans thought this rookie was a bit of a dickhead?... Strange coincidence - both Clemson starting QB Kyle Parker and NC State starting QB Russell Wilson are draft picks of the Colorado Rockies... It occurred to me that if Al Gore and John Kerry had a baby - that baby would be Spaulding Smails from Caddyshack... Heh heh - the final season of Mad Men... So last night Ricky Williams was tweeting about how he uses coconut water to replenish after a workout. I was thinking about looking into coconut water when I came across this post asking Is Coconut Water Really Better Than Gatorade? I'm still curious to see how coconut water tastes... It took Alex Rodriguez 46 at bats to hit his 600th home run. It's taken Jason Giambi 126 AB to hit his last 3 HR. Steroid testing is a bitch