The Rivals.com Five-Star Challenge presented by Under Armour was held over the weekend in Baltimore while Ole Miss’ elite camp took place on Friday. My thoughts on those topics plus the NBA Finals, American Pharoah’s win in the Belmont Stakes, my weekend in the nation’s capital and more follow here thanks to Oxford-based RE/MAX real estate agent Harry Alexander. Check out his website at www.harryalexander.com.
1. Shea Patterson arrived in Oxford in time for the Rebels’ elite camp on Friday, even though he had a very early flight to California and the Elite 11 quarterback camp on Saturday. Patterson was in Oxford playing the role of recruiter-in-chief, helping the Rebels work key targets such as offensive tackle Willie Allen, safety Deontay Anderson and wide receiver/Alabama commitment Shyheim Carter.
I was in Baltimore, so I’ll leave the news-breaking and analysis to Chase Parham and Jeffrey Wright, but from all accounts, it was a successful weekend in Oxford.
As of today, Ole Miss has a consensus top-10 class, and there’s a clear, doable path to move into the top five between now and the first Wednesday of February. The consensus in Baltimore, for example, is it’s an Ole Miss-Alabama battle for four-star running back Devin White. It wasn’t a coincidence, certainly, that Ole Miss sources were emphatic late Saturday that the Rebels’ newest commitment, Tariqious Tisdale, was being signed as a linebacker. White wants to play running back at the college level, and the Rebels are certainly amenable to accommodating that request. Prospects such as White, Anderson, Allen, Carter and others are the difference between a top-five finish and a top-12 finish.
2. More than 100 of the nation’s top seniors and juniors converged on Baltimore Friday for the Rivals100 Five-Star Challenge presented by Under Armour. Two of those players, wide receiver DeKaylin Metcalf and tight end Gabe Angel, are committed to Ole Miss. Metcalf was a standout at M&T Bank Stadium. Angel, meanwhile, didn’t do anything to help his stock.
“D.K. was a top performer,” Rivals.com regional analyst Josh Helmholdt said. “I saw him at the St. Louis Rivals Camp Series event. Physically, he stands out but I was concerned about whether he was explosive enough to be a difference-maker at the college level. I’m not concerned anymore. He’s an absolute physical marvel. He had a great day (Saturday). I’m fully on board with him being a top-50 type of guy.”
Helmholdt said he arrived in Baltimore believing Metcalf was over-ranked at No. 33 nationally. He left Sunday believing Metcalf’s star-ranking needs to be revisited.
“It’s definitely something we have to discuss when we have our rankings update at the end of the summer,” Helmholdt said. “He definitely played his way into someone we’re going to have to talk about.”
Angel, meanwhile, appeared to be somewhat out of his element, Helmholdt said. Angel’s 7-on-7 team in Baltimore climbed out of the losers’ bracket to play in the championship game. Angel was relegated to the bench in the final three games of his team’s run.
“It was just, in that setting, he didn’t have the athleticism or the explosiveness to really get open and make a difference,” Helmholdt said.
Angel had dropped in Rivals.com’s most recent rankings.
“There was nothing he did this weekend that I saw to argue for him moving up,” Helmholdt said.
3. During the Rivals.com Publisher’s Conference Thursday afternoon, I asked a couple of questions of Rivals.com national recruiting director Mike Farrell. One _ Why do you guys all hate Ole Miss? _ was meant in jest and drew some laughs. The other _ How much does the Rivals Camp Series weigh in the rankings process as opposed to game film? _ was meant to prompt discussion. It did.
Farrell said as Rivals.com is ranking players earlier and earlier, the Rivals Camp Series events play a huge role in initial rankings. Farrell acknowledged he’s heard criticism of putting so much weight on “underwear football,” but he pointed out that many coaches, including Alabama’s Nick Saban, make evaluations based primarily on football drills done in shorts and shirts. He also noted that he’s heard criticism that Rivals.com’s rankins are skewed by who does and does not attend Rivals Camp Series events. Farrell disagreed with that assessment and he said he and the other analysts are working hard to disprove it.
Game film, Farrell said, is used to verify camp observations and weighs more heavily as a player progresses through his high school career.
Farrell said there’s not going to be a sixth star added to the rankings process. He said he expects a few more five-star rankings distributed this season, but he said he wants analysts to be more stingy with three-star rankings. We’ll get him on the Oxford Exxon podcast later this summer to discuss rankings. I’ll give Farrell a ton of credit. He’s damn good at his job, and further, he’s quite transparent regarding the rankings process.
4. The nation’s No. 1-ranked offensive tackle, Allen, Texas, five-star Gregory Little, won top offensive lineman honors at the Rivals.com Five-Star Challenge in Baltimore over the weekend. He is scheduled to visit Ole Miss this week, as early as Monday. Little is committed to Texas A&M, but other schools are very much in the mix.
That’s how recruiting will go for the next few weeks. Prospects will trickle in on swings through the Southeast. It will be that way until late June/early July, when most coaching staffs take some vacation time before the season begins with fall camp. Ole Miss one-day senior camp is scheduled for July 18.
This sounds like a broken record by now, I know, but a lot of the summer recruiting will be spent getting to know 2017 and 2018 prospects who are getting an earlier start on the process by taking trips to several programs over the course of a few days. Sometimes, those visits are very coordinated. Sometimes, coaches are taken by surprise. In other words, the level of organization varies and frequently, schools are caught off-guard by prospects who show up in town with no advance warning.
5. LeBron James made just 11 of 34 field goals. He scored 39 points, however, and led Cleveland to an overtime win over Golden State Sunday night, tying the NBA Finals at 1-1.
It was an improbable performance for the Cavaliers, left to finish the series without point guard Kyrie Irving. Matthew Dellavadova filled in for Irving and, as James said afterwards, gave the Cavaliers “everything.”
I still believe Golden State wins the series, and I won’t be surprised if they pull it off in five or six games. However, give James credit. He’s one of the greatest players to ever play the game. He put Cleveland on his back Sunday, playing 50 minutes in that environment, with those stakes and with a supporting case that won’t have to worry about enshrinement in Springfield, Mass., anytime soon.
If Cleveland wins, as Jeffrey told me via text late Sunday, it’s time to consider James as the greatest player in the history of the league. No one would have ever carried a team to a title with less. The pressure is on Golden State now. The window will never be open wider. The Warriors must win one of the two games in Cleveland and regain control of the series. I suspect they will, but on Sunday night, we witnessed greatness in the form of sheer determination.
6. Speaking of greatness, American Pharoah became the first Triple Crown winner in horse racing since Affirmed in 1978 on Saturday, running away with the Belmont Stakes. American Pharoah led from wire to wire, pulling away and winning by 5 ½ lengths. I can’t begin to tell you what it meant for racing better than SI.com’s Tim Layden, who wrote a brilliant piece on the race.
http://www.si.com/horse-racing/2015/06/06/american-pharoah-belmont-stakes-triple-crown-bob-baffert
Pharoah’s owners indicated Sunday they’ll continue to race the thoroughbred, saying it’s what the fans want to see. As a fan, I’m grateful. The horse is a superstar in his sport, and I want to see him run again. But I’ll be honest; if that were my horse, there’s no way in the world he’d ever run to anything but the breeding shed. The risk of injury would terrify me, especially given how valuable that horse’s _ what the word here? _ genetics are after Saturday afternoon’s performance.
7. On Friday afternoon, I caught the Super Shuttle from my hotel in Hunt Valley to the Amtrak station at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. I was the driver’s first pick-up. Before getting to my train, I got a tour of sorts of Baltimore, a city that has been in the headlines over the past few months since the death of Freddie Gray and the subsequent arrest of several Baltimore police officers.
I passed Pimlico Race Course, which looked stunningly dilapidated. The shuttle also passed a block or two from the area in Baltimore most impacted from the riots last month. Maybe it was my imagination, but the people still appeared tense.
From talking to people in Baltimore and Hunt Valley, I sensed two emotions: Embarrassment and fear. Locals were embarrassed about the reputation hit their city had endured. The fear stemmed from a universal belief that not guilty verdicts would result in more lawlessness in the city. No one was saying they were demanding convictions _ in fact, several people expressed concerns the officers couldn’t get a fair trial in Baltimore _ but there was a trepidation that an acquittal would bring chaos.
A year ago, I enjoyed my time in Baltimore. On Friday afternoon, I was excited to put it in my rear view mirror.
8. I took the train to Washington on Friday afternoon in time to catch the Chicago Cubs’ 7-5 loss to the Washington Nationals (of course, the Cubs won on the day before and day after I had tickets; that’s the loving relationship the franchise and I have). More on that in a bit. I got up on Saturday morning and headed to the National Mall area to do my long training run.
My time was atrocious. I used almost all of two hours to run nine miles. I’ve never had a better run. I’m an American history junkie, and I hadn’t been to D.C. since college. The weather was perfect, featuring a cool breeze and temperatures in the upper 60s. I saw Marine One fly past the Washington Monument and to the White House. I saw World War II veterans make their way to the World War II Memorial for ceremonies later that day to honor the anniversary of D-Day. I also saw a man, presumably a Vietnam War veteran, search for and find the name of a friend at the Vietnam War Memorial. He broke down when he found it. His wife put an arm around him and comforted him. Total strangers, self included, stepped back out of respect.
I continued on my journey, running to the Lincoln Memorial and then to the U.S. Capitol, my thoughts very much with that man and the other men and women who have fought for the freedoms we enjoy today. I had plans and needed to get back to my hotel, but I hated to see my run come to an end. We live in an amazing country.
9. On Friday night, I met up with my friend Jose Fortuno at Nationals Park. I’ve known Jose since 1998 or so. We were part of the same fantasy baseball league and we were both active on a Cubs message board. We talk on the phone frequently, and our discussions _ which used to be 100 percent baseball _ are now much more often about life than they are about the team we both follow.
On Thursday, at the Rivals.com Publishers Conference, I listened to peers talk about the importance of building a sense of community on our message boards. That old Cubs message board was definitely a community, and a lifelong friendship was spawned from it. We caught up on kids, jobs and the Cubs on Friday night, all the while laughing at the Nationals fan next to us who got louder and louder with his trash talk as he consumed one Blue Moon after another.
The point: The part of my job I like the least is moderating and monitoring message boards. I’m a big believer in free speech, and I am not easily offended. However, it’s important that we keep the community here conducive to relationships and positive feelings. That doesn’t mean people can’t disagree; Jose and I, for example, have disagreed for years about whether the Cubs needed to do a complete rebuild to become truly competitive. Losing, after all, makes for irritable conversations.
It’s in our business interest to cultivate an environment of community, one that makes it emotionally difficult for customers to leave, even when Ole Miss is disappointing fans on the playing field. There’s nothing, after all, more important than friendship.
10. Speaking of message board communities, I benefited from this one on Saturday. A RebelGrove.com subscriber who shall remain nameless for the sake of his privacy reached out to me a few weeks ago when he learned I would be making the trip to Baltimore. Thanks to his kindness, I was able to enjoy a tour of Ford’s Theatre and a tour of the west wing of the White House on Saturday.
I’ve read several books about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and to stand feet from the box where he was shot was beyond fascinating for me. As anyone who knows me well can attest, I’ve always been attracted to books about the presidency and its occupants. Getting to stick my head into the Oval Office and think about all of the men who had occupied that room and the decisions that were made in it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.
I’d like to think I made a new friend in the process, yet another reminder of the importance of the community-building aspect of my job.
A few extra links for you this week:
Hey, a journalist brought down FIFA’s corruption. The FBI and other U.S. investigators are getting the credit, but journalist Andrew Jennings got the ball rolling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...d-the-fifa-scandal-that-toppled-sepp-blatter/
I don’t know about you, but I feel better about myself when I dress nicely. As it turns out, there might be some science to back up those feelings. Dressing sharply just might change the way your brain works, in a good way.
http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-f...marter/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_189201954
None of us are going to live forever, at least not here on Earth. However, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil believes that soon, our brains could achieve immortality.
http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-f...marter/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_189201954
I’m a Louisiana boy, and I love spicy food. It’s always been my opinion that men like spicy food far more than women. It appears I’ve been wrong. A recent study at Penn State found that the fairer sex enjoys the flavor of spicy food more than men do.
http://www.foodandwine.com/fwx/food...njoy-it-study-says?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter
Have a great week.
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