FIU Panthers Prowl

Hoopsters send a letter to the president; Ashley, Ashley

In the wake of the coaching staff's firing Friday, several men's basketball players have asked for release from their scholarships and have been denied by the school -- for the moment. Players have appealed via e-mailed letter to a higher FIU power, FIU President Mark Rosenberg, and some hope to get their release by the end of the week after meetings with FIU staffers.

According to a source close to FIU, a school asking about one of the players was told in an e-mail by FIU that it was against athletic department policy to release players from scholarships during a coaching search.

One player I spoke to today said some players wanted to meet whomever the new coach will be, but desired their release just to keep their options open.

Joey de La Rosa, on the other hand, said he's transferring because, "Coach Thomas was my guy, loyalty is the key" at the start of a passionate defense of the coaching staff that focused mostly on the way the staff influenced kids off the court. Sophomore forward Dominique Ferguson also said this would be his last semester at FIU.

Sources say starting guard Phil Taylor also has asked for his release.

"I'm sure they feel like they had the rug pulled out from under them," Thomas said Wednesday night. "I'm sure whereever they go, they'll be assets to their school. I'm deeply humbled. I love those guys."

Thomas also said, "The unity and commitment they've shown each other in this tough time only strengthens my belief that next year was going to be a great year for us."

Whether or not that's accurate, expect those committed for next year, including Chicago's Milton Doyle, to head elsewhere.The next coach could come in with a stripped down roster and taking the table scraps in recruiting.

This is the full text of a letter sent to FIU Presdent Rosenberg:

Dear President Rosenberg, FIU Administrators, Faculty, Staff and Media:

We are writing this letter in regards to a few concerns we have surrounding the firing of our coach, Isiah Thomas, and his staff. First, we would like to explain that on Monday night at the Sports Banquet, we meant no disrespect to our university or anyone in attendance, but only wished to exercise our human right to protest and support our coach and mentors in a time of grief. Our staff taught us five values -- Honesty, Loyalty, Belief, Sacrifice and Trust -- so I am sure you can see that our “silent protest” stems from these excellent principles.

Our main concerns that we wish someone to address include why Coach Thomas and his staff were fired and why it was done in such an ugly fashion? Nobody in this university has sat down and given a thorough explanation as to why they were dismissed. This is very troubling because even though we are athletes we are still humans and have rights which should be respected. What is confusing is if Coach Thomas was fired for losing games, he is not alone in fault because we were the ones playing the games. He was given five years to fix an existing problem, and then it was cut to three. The team he had coming in next year was young but by far his best class. Neither he nor we got the opportunity to finish what we started and have no explanation as to why our goal was cut short by this university.

We also ask someone to look into why Coach Thomas and his staff had to be humiliated by being told they were fired and to pack their belongings immediately, with no explanation of what was going on in front of our team and other FIU staff members. It was quite embarrassing for us to witness and hurtful. They deserved a better way to leave. It is already embarrassing being fired.

 We would like everyone to know that we came to FIU not only to gain an education and play basketball but also to be mentored by Coach Thomas. This is why we are extremely upset about his firing; we lost not a coach but a mentor. Maybe you are not knowledgeable of the many things that Coach Thomas has done in helping develop us as young men. These things don’t show up on the scoreboard at FIU but do show up on the scoreboard of life. There are too many to discuss but we will mention to you one of the most important ones he did and that you can investigate.

 Please contact the writers of a book Coach Thomas suggested we read, “Out of Bounds, When Scholarship Athletes become Academic Scholars” by Dr. Jabari Mohair and Dr. Derek Van Rheenen from UC Berkeley. Not only did Coach Thomas tell us about this book but on multiple occasions he brought these authors to FIU to lead academic workshops which stimulated our minds and helped us to understand what it is to be a true scholar athlete. These workshops were also attended by FIU faculty and students who were not athletes. Even NBA All Star Amare Stoudemire sat in the workshops which lasted over a weekend. But, more amazing is that not only did Coach Thomas and his staff participate in the workshops but Coach Thomas has led by example by taking classes in sports and education with the professors via Skype. He also was admitted into the MA program at Berkeley in the School of Education. He was not only telling us to go to class but served as a role model by being a student himself. Please reach out and ask these professors about our team and coach and how education and mentoring was the focal point of his short tenure, not winning on the court but in changing lives. Coach would tell us that “our record may be losing on the court, but that will change in time but our graduation rate is 17-2 which is more important”. This is the Isiah we know and love not the one which the media attempts to destroy. If they brought their cameras and notepads into these workshops they may find it beneficial to report on how sports should be used to build character not destroy it.

Lastly, the AD of FIU told us only that Coach Thomas was fired because “we are going in another direction,” and we respect his decision even though we disagree with it. Every human has a right for “freedom of choice” which is a given not a privilege. We chose to come to FIU for at least 5 years to be mentored, play basketball and enjoy college life. FIU has given us a great opportunity and is a fine university. We have appreciated our time here.

Yet, some of us have asked to be released from the school and have been rejected by the AD. We ask that with our mentor being fired you to give us the freedom of choice to “move in another direction.” Please help us receive our athletic “releases” so that we can find a coach and program which will be a good fit in our growth. America has many fine universities to choose from, and we only wish to have the option of staying here or finding a place which has a coach that will continue in the same tradition as Coach Thomas. Even if FIU was to hire another ex- NBA coach that would not change our feelings about leaving because we did not come here thinking Isiah Thomas was going to take us to the NBA. But the person of Isiah Thomas as a mentor is what was important in our decision.

In one of our meetings with the Professors we learned that “when an athletic department uses players as commodities it loses its moral leadership”. We hope that this school sees us not as “bodies” but “minds” which can grow develop and become productive citizens of the world.

 

Thank you

FIU men’s Basketball Team

Athletic director Pete Garcia hasn't responded to calls or text messages the last few days, blowing up the basketball coaching staff then going underground like the athletic director of The Weathermen. Which brings to mind the first rap song...

 

 SOFTBALL

All of the above overshadowns FIU senior Ashley McClain being named one of the 25 finalists for this year's USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year.

McClain's hitting .419 with a .667 slugging percentage. She leads the team with nine doubles, five home runs, 29 RBI and a .534 on-base percentage that's 12th in the nation. She's one home run from tying the school record for career homers.

FIU dealt No. 6-ranked Louisiana-Lafayette only its second loss of the season Tuesday before being shut out Wednesday.

A Stunned Thomas Thought He Had More Time, Doesn't Know What Next

What next? A return to the NBA? Recently fired FIU men's basketball coach Isiah Thomas said he needed to "take a couple of days to digest this."

"My plan today was to take a recruit out to dinner," Thomas laughed darkly hours after he and the FIU men's basketball coaching staff had been sacked.

Thomas said he had been interviewing a candidate to replace resigned assistant coach Frank Holloway when he got the call from FIU athletic director Pete Garcia using that euphemism "we're going in a different direction."

(And a hilarious euphemism it is. A pro sports radio play-by-play announcer heard that phrase as he was fired and laughed, "What, going in the direction of not having a play-by-play announcer?")

Thomas felt as if he really had only two years to turn FIU around because he was hired on Signing Day three years ago, essentially eliminating a recruiting season. He didn't go into this, but it's worth saying -- when he was hired, FIU wasn't just a program with a long tradition of losing amidst total apathy on campus and in the metropolitan area toward college basketball. Also, the program had its piece of the probation under which the whole athletic department labored since 2006. It's a program with no regular local radio broadcasts and no television.

The record says that hasn't changed much: 26-65 in three seasons, 14-36 in the Sun Belt and the Sun Belt record breakdown went 4-14, 5-11, 5-11. A 2-9 home record this season and eight wins overall was inexcusable considering FIU pulled off some shocking road wins.

Rarely have I seen a team that so often lapsed into dumb basketball for five to seven-minute blocs as this year's FIU men. Some teams have occasional brain farts and other teams live in a state of terminal brain flatulation. But this was a team that seemed to suffer rolling synapse blackouts. That points to coaching, but, at some point, players have to take some responsibility for that.

"But we're playing with freshmen and sophomores," Thomas pointed out. "At no place in the country do you walk in and win with freshmen and sophomores unless it's Kentucky freshmen and sophomores. The close games we lost, those are the games freshmen and sophomores lose."

A team with no margin for error got kneecapped with an injury that took out its best player, guard DeJuan Wright, for several games midseason. They lost power forward Tola Akamolafe to academic ineligibility sources say stemmed from bad advice given him. While we're on that track, other Camp Mitch sources said during the year FIU delivered academic rejections to point guard K.C. Ross-Miller and North Texas' dazzling Tony Mitchell. Too risky. To be fair, each got academically bumped from LSU and Missouri, respectively. But FIU's got athletes just as academically questionable competing in other sports.

As far as academics, 17 of 19 players graduated in Thomas' three years at FIU. Not surprising -- the man spent six NBA offseasons going back to school until he got his degree and is still taking graduate courses 25 years later. He doesn't pay lip service to academics. He cares about the books far more than the average college basketball or football coach. Would he bring in an academic risk? Yep. Would he also get angry if that kid or any other kid wasn't pushed to attain their academic potential or got lazy about it? Yep.

I asked him if he thought FIU was ready as a program and athletic department overall to be a consistent 18-20-win team that could contend for the NCAAs regularly out of the Sun Belt. He said he thought so with Myers, Chicago's Milton Doyle and Tim Williams coming in next year and four of the state's top 50 recruits verbally committed for 2013.

Next year's team won't have Wright or Jeremy Allen for leadership. As of now, it will have Phil Taylor moving to shooting guard, a more natural position for him, and five players 6-9 and over (if they all stay, post-Thomas): Brandon Moore, Dominique Ferguson, Joey De La Rosa, Gilles Dierickx and transfer Lekan Ajayi.

 

Pete Garcia says...

Here are some things from a Monday night conversation I had with FIU AD Pete Garcia.

His reaction to the day's events: "Rutgers handled everything in a professional manner. I'm very happy Mario decided to stay. I agree with him that he's building something special here."

"Obviously, money isn't everything, especially when you're like Mario, who's from down here, who has worked down here to build something over the last five years."

When I asked about the still-ongoing talks for another deal, he said, "We've talked about things, but this wasn't a leverage thing. It was never about that."

Nobody knows completely what's going on in Cristobal's head. But I find myself thinking of my Herald colleague Dan LeBatard, a 43-year-old Cuban-American born, raised, educated, working for 22 years of post-college life in South Florida where he has family. Dan has said often -- and I know it to be true -- that he's had a number of opportunities to leave South Florida for much more lucrative, higher profile jobs in sports media, but he stays because he's happy in this area.

Cristobal is a 41-year-old Cuban-American born, raised, educated and working for most of the last 20 years in South Florida, where he has family. He works for an AD that he's known for 20 years and has a program he rebuilt and of which he's emperor. He and I have talked about that moment on the drive home to Miami Beach when you're coming over one of the causeway crests and you take in the beautiful breadth of the bay, boats, buildings. You can't help but smile and think how lucky you are to be driving toward that scene every day because it's home.

Never underrate comfort and happiness.

 

Basketball, the beach and radio, radio on a Saturday morning

Take care of yourselves out there -- there's stomach virus going around, dropping kids and adults like Sonny Liston in a bad mood on a good day.

They might still be hammering, painting and punch-listing stuff inside The Branch as the entrance renovations and suite(s) debut today. And it won't look finished until there's no more oversized Tonka stuff digging up the northeast corner of the arena area or the landscaping is truly finished on the southeast side.

But, hey, this is Miami-Dade County, where basic contracting has recently advanced all the way to 1968 ("Maybe the gate to the garage doesn't work because your windshield is too thick") and waiting for projects to finish could've been the inspiration for the Chinese Restaurant episode of Seinfeld. So, while we have the Acronym Agony Shootout inside today between two men's teams just trying to get themselves together for the Sun Belt Tournament, FIU should count itself lucky the building's Just For Men treatment got done in time.

Speaking of today's men's game, it's on The Sun Belt Network and (my shallow understanding is) blacked out locally on ESPN3.com because it's on The Sun Belt Network. That's mimosas and white sangria if you have Comcast Cable, which has The Sun Belt Network. It's you and the kid with a stomach virus if you don't.

TV's also why the men's game open's for the women's game today. Of course, had the scheduling been done by record, it also would've been a situation in which the women's teams, the two with the over .500 records, could've told the men, "Go warm 'em up for us."

As mentioned, neither FIU or FAU, the men's preseason conference favorite, is having the level of success of even its most reasonable hopes. Some of you have asked about Isiah Thomas' job security. My sense is Thomas, who'll have two years left on his contract after this season, is more likely to fire FIU than FIU is to fire Thomas. Dealing with off court, paper wrangler mistakes such as the eligibility problems of forward Tola Akomolafe, who didn't stumble in any of his classes according to an athletic department source familiar with the situation, are the type of thing that can cause someone who doesn't need the job to say, "To Compton with this crap."

FIU sports long have been hindered on the field/court/pitch is that the school always seems to be playing catch up in the offices and board rooms. They went Division I in basketball without the proper infrastructure. They did the same in football. They've lost tournament bids, favorable rulings on transfers, etc. out of political weakness. Whatever you want to say about Pete Garcia, he brings a political savvy and a knowledge of relationship value to the FIU athletic department that's been arid in that area for years.

On Garcia: he feels there are certain sports FIU just should be winners in just on being in South Florida -- golf, tennis, soccer (I'd debate that one), baseball, football. And he wants to be a power in sand volleyball, which the NCAA has added for spring.

 "I've emphasized it and here's why: I want to win," Garcia said. "It's a new sport. No school has a 100-year head start on us. No school has a winning tradition over us. No school has better facilities than us -- everybody's building the same facilities. And, there's only a couple of regions in this country that can have as good a weather and South Beach for sand volleyball. You add that up and we should be very competitive, very quickly at the highest level because we don't have those things to overcome. We're not trying to catch anybody and we have some advantages they don't have at Nebraska. Michigan." 

I asked him why FIU basketball games aren't on the radio anymore. FAU's on 760AM up in Palm Beach. Even Nova Southeastern has its games on the air, 640AM.

"You've got to be a superfan to listen to FIU radio basketball. And if you're really that superfan, we've got to do everything we can to get you here," Garcia replied. "And remember, radio is expensive -- they're not paying us. We'd have to pay them to be on the radio. You've got to buy the time. It's an expense. How much are you getting out of that expense? Are you better off spending that money on marketing, promotions, the low hanging fruit. What's our low hanging fruit? Our students, right there in the dorms. Let's use that money, buy pizzas, let's do this or that, let's promote it over there right across the street and let's get them to come."

TENNIS

FIU got the doubles point to take a 1-0 lead on No. 14 Clemson in the women's tennis season opener. Then, Clemson went West Virginia-on-Clemson on FIU, taking the six singles matches to win 6-1. Karyn Guttormsen and Giuletta Boha won their doubles match and Lisa Johnson and Christine Seredni won theirs.

RIP

She threw it down on so many tunes for so long. But this is the one that, to me, not only fit romance (wife and I had a second "first dance" to it at our wedding in 1999), but for any athlete who ever won a long pursued championship.

My your heart and head be at rest, Ms. James.

 

Some Things About Saturday...

ADDING ONTO THE TOP: Several folks have told me they've heard a Division I quarterback out of Miami, a spectacular sophomore with a spread option skill set, isn't terribly happy with where he is and might want to transfer back home. If he did, it wouldn't be to the offense in Coral Gables.

NOW, BACK TO BOWL TALK...

FIU got what everybody connected with the program wanted because athletic director Pete Garcia got proactive. As I wrote months back, I think Garcia's done an excellent job in understanding what a pivotal year this is for the football team and athletic program overall.

Garcia's been talking to the Beef O'Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl for over a year, lobbying hard the last two months and building an overall relationship with them and the bowl folks at ESPN, owners of the game. If you're a college football program that still could use some broader exposure, there are worse friends to make.

"The fact that ESPN had us on national TV seven times in the first eight games...I keep (talking) about ESPN because they believe in us," Garcia said. "We've got a great relationship with them and we've got to do everything we can to keep that relationship going."

As stated on a blog going into last week's season finale, FIU gives ESPN fun football: big plays, speed, usually some drama. Frankly, if I were ESPN, the only thing I'd want to tell FIU as far as its games on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU is let's not do Tuesday anymore -- on TV, the crowd for the Troy game came off as embarrassing for a good program.

I asked Garcia how much he thought he the online fan blitz of the Beef O'Brady's folks affected the bowl's decision.

"I thank all our fans for their enthusiasm and support. We take our hats off to them. But this is something without winning the eight games, I'm not even sure if we had won seven, if we would've gotten the invitation. I've got to give credit to our football team for putting us into position to be invited. The quality of football they're playing...I don't want to single any one player out, but we play pretty exciting football and TV likes that."

"It's a team effort. We're the FIU family." 

Garcia kept giving props to the football team, as if needing to hammer home that the team had a good season: "I want to brag on our football team a bit. They're 8-4. That's not only the best record in Florida. They are the only football team south of Orlando and Tampa going to a bowl game."

Earlier, Cristobal was finishing answering my question about comparing the feeling this year to last, he also threw in a reference to FIU's unique position locally. He said the way last year ended, with a tough loss to Middle Tennessee, made it hard to fully enjoy the bowl game invitation that came the next day.

“What makes this one just as special is that we won our last game at Middle Tennessee with a better regular season record. And the ability to play a game right here, in our home state that speaks volumes. To represent the city of Miami and South Florida in a postseason game. I haven’t checked who’s playing where, but I do believe we’re the only South Flroida team representing in the postseason. It speaks volumes of our athletic department, our student-athletes and the university.” 

Check out Bowl Central at http://www.fiusports.com for oodles of Beef O'Brady's Bowl information stuff.

Also want to say again -- it's in the comments of the previous blog -- why there wasn't a headlined story online sooner than a few hours afterwards Saturday.

This season, this blog is where I've put breaking news first. On a few occasions, I've updated this blog several times until it's time to write the story that'll appear online or in print, then I've come back to the blog later for a more analytical look at the news. I've done it that way because it's faster, allows more flexibility in posting (a few blog posts, including Saturday's first, were made off my BlackBerry while doing Daddy stuff) and it's the way I've seen it best handled in other places at this paper and others.

That's the way I did it Saturday. Could I also have taken much of the same information, juggled it around a bit and done a regular story that would've appeared online earlier? Yes. But I didn't. I was slammed and felt the news was out there in a blog post that would be noted on the front page of the site and the sports site page. As it was, I wound up filing the last item 30 minutes late, an eternity in this business. If you want to say the "tease" to the blog post off the front or the one off the http://www.miamiherald.com/sports page should've been more prominent, maybe you're right.

I just grabbed the print Sports section. Top story, stripped across the top, Dolphins vs. Raiders. It's an NFL Sunday, folks. Two columns, one by Dan LeBatard on NFL violence and one on Howard Schnellenberger's last game coaching. Below the fold, my column on FIU/Orange Bowl/bowls, focused on FIU. You can say that's playing FAU over FIU, so it's bad story placement. Or you can say that's a column on the last game of, arguably, the most significant figure in modern South Florida college football, without whom neither program would exist (see my postgame FIU-FAU game blog or my pregame print/online story), so it's correct story placement.

To say I or The Herald were trying to "sit on the story" or downplay it is ridiculous. I wrote about FIU's bowl situation several times in stories that ran online and in print -- it was the advance story for the Louisiana-Monroe game -- and even more often on this blog. Though Thursday was my day off, I blogged as soon as the West Virginia-South Florida game ended with the result, a few things about the game and what it meant for FIU's chances to get to St. Pete. Saturday, as soon as the Cincy game ended, a blog post went up saying that alone might've been enough to get FIU into the St. Pete game. I texted, called furiously Thursday, Friday and Saturday, hoping to find out FIU's bowl fate as soon as possible for both professional and personal purposes (in 24 holiday seasons of this profession, I've been extremely lucky to be home every Christmas and all but two New Year's Eves.).

No blog appeared Friday nor story in Saturday's paper advancing Saturday's games and what might happen for FIU. I was on furlough Friday. That means I'm off, no pay and not allowed by company policy to have anything to do with The Herald. My Twitter account is personal. I chose that furlough date back in September.

Some of FIU fans' dissatisfaction with The Herald I understand from living it as an FIU beat reporter back when 70 percent of the buildings on campus now were no closer to reality than being on the Brady dad's architect drawing table. It wasn't a "we hate FIU" attitude at The Herald, but just a mindset that FIU was the other Division I program in town, the one without a football team, with good baseball, soccer and women's basketball teams. I'm not sure anybody cared enough about FIU to hate FIU. It wasn't even a full stand alone beat. I got into some blistering arguments with editors -- all of whom have gone on to retirement, other papers or their reward in the hereafter -- over decisions they made out of habit. ("I did it right the first time. You butchered it. You made the mess, you clean it up!" a 22-year-old me snapped often in a running argument with an editor over one story.)

I'm sure slights have happened that nursed anti-Herald feelings in the many years between then and when I re-took this beat in June. But I'm also sure there's been a plethora of good coverage from each beat reporter and The Herald. Good coverage isn't always pretty. I'm comfortable with most of what we've done since June. Nobody's ever going to be perfect and complain when you want here. You can be mean, just keep it clean (relatively).

But when I or The Herald doesn't handle something in the manner you like, do me a favor and at least assume an absence of malice on our part. I'm not sure who in The Herald has time or energy for malice these days. I sure don't.

 

Vegans Begone! It's Beef O'Brady's Bowl for FIU

The only team in town that's going bowling this season will do so across the state on Dec. 20.

As expected after Cincinnati withstood a furious comeback attempt by Connecticut for a 35-27 win Saturday, thus keeping UConn from being bowl eligible, the Beef O'Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl extended FIU an invitation that the school accepted. The opponent hasn't been determined, although it'll likely be Pitt if it comes from the Big East.

A second consecutive bowl trip, the second in the program's seven Division I seasons, follows the school's first eight-win season and a season in which the Panthers recorded their first win against a school from a conference with an automatic BCS bowl bid.

"These last couple of seasons have been a historic run for us and hte opporutnity to continue to play into December," FIU head coach Mario Cristobal said, "in our home state, in a bowl game of the caliber of the BEef O'Brady's Bowl is an honor and privilege."

Cristobal expressed happiness at being able to go into a recruit's home Saturday night and immediately talk about FIU accepting another bowl bid. He also mentioned how nice a sendoff it would be for the program's seniors, many of whom came to FIU after a 1-11 2007 season.

FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said though the invitation came around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, they had been talking with the Beef 'O Brady's Bowl people for two months and said the bowl was always FIU's first choice.

Though the Sun Belt Conference's tie-ins are the New Orleans Bowl and Mobile, Alabama's GoDaddy.com Bowl, it's obvious why FIU would prefer this game over the other two: a three and a half hour drive for most FIU students on holiday break, a game that allows everyone to be home for Christmas and New Year's and an ESPN-connected game getting "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" hype.

Garcia said he expects FIU to sell out its allottment of around 5,000 tickets easily (ticket offices are already open or phone at 305-348-4263) and hopes to take 8,000 to 10,000 fans over for the mid-week game.

The dominoes that had to fall for this to happen began Thursday with West Virginia winning a wild game with South Florida 30-27 on a walk-off field goal. That kept South Florida from being bowl eligible. UConn's lost took it out of contention. That created a hole on both sides, Conference USA and the Big East.

Before Thursday, it was entirely possible FIU could get shut out of the bowls, despite an 8-4 record and win over Big East co-champion Louisville.

"There are so many moving parts," Garcia said. "To say things were changing by the day is an understatement. They were changing by the hour."

"

Playing conference dominoes in West Dade; Wright's crutches; men's soccer ends with a win

One fish bleeds. A bigger fish feeds.

So it continues to be with conference realignment. The Big East, originally put together as a big, sexy package of voluptuous TV markets to satiate television's college basketball lust of the late 1970s-early 1980s, now finds itself struggling to stay together as football dictates many schools' next move. Now, the Big East must put together a brew of schools that'll allow it to keep a BCS bid as well as the attentions of TV partners. It hunts for parts of Conference USA as the Southeastern Conference and ACC bulk up, the Big Ten and Big 12 solidify. Conference USA gets into an alliance with Mountain West to bond through bulk if not strength (that reminds me of Maryland teammates and road roomies Darryl Hill, the ACC's first black football player, and Jerry Fishman, the lone Jewish player on the team, bonding to help each other through the mine fields of the day. Fishman summarized it on an HBO documentary as Hill helping him get through economics class and he keeping an eye out for Hill on the practice field and in society).

Nobody knows how long anything's going to take. The Big East wants to make West Virginia go through the legal separation before divorce while West Virginia just wants to split. If some moves get held up, gridlock could ensue for other moves.

So where does this leave FIU, now in the Sun Belt Conference, which is on the bottom of the food chain?

"We're trying to talk to as many people as possible just to see what the landscape is like -- and the landscape is constantly shifting," FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said Friday morning. "We're looking for what's best for the university, not just the athletic department. But we're going to be proactive."

FIU's already got a toe in Conference USA, the Panthers men's soccer affiliation. Yet they're not exactly ready to say "see ya!" to the Sun Belt yet, either. Certainly, the Conference USA-Mountain West blob would love to get some of the South Florida television market. Nobody's saying FIU is the University of Miami, Ohio or Coral Gables. Both as an athletic and football program, it's going through adolescence. But having a conference that fat without a footprint in a football area like Florida seems illogical. Same thing with Texas, which is why the conventional wisdom is North Texas to Conference USA to replace SMU (Dallas-Fort Worth area replacing Dallas-Fort Worth area) and FIU to replace UCF (massive school, growing program in South Florida replacing massive school, growing program in Mid-Florida).

I've said all along I expect FIU's next move to be to Conference USA. But geography matters for jack anymore, especially if we have a bunch of superconferences. Basketball teams might play each other only once each season, thus reducing the geographic consideration for travel. So FIU's next move might be to a conference based far, far away. Or, once the plates stop shifting and the earthquakes end, FIU might find they really can't improve their lot by moving. In that case, you don't move. Stay in the Sun Belt. 

Will it leave them outside the velvet rope of whatever big boy football party created by some of the bulked up conferences? Maybe. Might any move they make leave them outside the velvet rope, just in a different spot? Maybe. But, as we've seen this year, there's little permanence in collegiate alliances.

MEN'S BASKETBALL

You might've seen senior guard DeJuan Wright hobbling around campus on crutches Friday. Wright said trainers are just being cautious today with the knee he sprained in August and he would be fine for this week's exhibitions.

MEN'S SOCCER

On Senior Night, two freshmen and a sophomore gave FIU a 3-2 win over Florida Gulf Coast to close out the season at 5-8-2.

Goals by freshmen Andri Alexandersoon and Colby Burdette sandwiched Florida Gulf Coast goals to send the game headed for overtime at 2-2. It never got there as sophomore Nicolas Rodriguez-Fraile struck in the 88th minute.

So ended the sayonara for Nicholas Chase, Lucas Di Croce, John Kite, Leonardo Martinez, Mario Uribe, Jahbari Willis and Chris Lamarre.

"Overall, I have to thank them for being part of the rebuilding of the program," coach Munga Eketebi said. "With what we've been through (playing without the full complement of scholarships), we are very close. I feel bad that they're going to miss out on the final touch."

When I asked him for prideful moments from this class, Eketebi pointed to this year's games against ranked teams such as UCF (0-0), SMU (2-1 overtime loss), Kentucky (1-0 win) and Alabama-Birmingham (0-0): "We've demonstrated we can hang with anybody."

In such games, you can't help but wonder what could've been had the Panthers had either of their top two goal scorers from last year. Well, actually, they had Rodriguez-Fraile, but injuries limited him to four games. He still managed three goals and an assist. The real world came calling for Michael Muehseler while he still had eligibility left.

"He got a job with a Swiss bank and he had to take it," Eketebi said. "He graduated in December and had done an internship with the bank. He was a 4.0 student. At first, they told him 'We're going to hire you upon graduation' but they decided not to wait."

 

ESPN GameDay at practice, Hilton, too (40%), on attendance and radio

An ESPN GameDay crew was at this morning's football FIU's practice to shoot a feature that'll air during Saturday's show. Coach Mario Cristobal wore a mike early in practice.

"It was very brief," Cristobal said. "Obviously, it wouldn't compromise anything for our game plan and our chances for victory. It's a tremendous honor."

Cristobal said Hilton was "getting better and better," and remained "optimistic" Hilton and Hilton's right hamstring would be ready for Saturday. Yet Cristobal also put Hilton's practice participation at "about 40 percent."

AD Pete Garcia says he's expecting a full house Saturday, especially if the student section continues to increase. He estimates 6,000 students came Saturday and 4,000 came for the season opener. In addition to the atmosphere and dolllars, Garcia had a football reason to plead for another large crowd. He credited crowd noise for UCF's five false starts and one delay of game. I don't know if I agree entirely, although that is a high total for a well-coached team not named "New England Patriots" (you'd be surprised at how often they jump -- one game of theirs I tracked, the tight end jumped so often, I finally asked someone "Are they telling him the snap count?"). And, as I point out in tomorrow's story on the pass rush, FIU's been doing such taxidermy on the run that even five-yard penalties put teams in passing situations against the Gilded Cats.

Last Saturday, though the Central Florida folks filled out their side, there were open spots in the West stands and apparently on the press box side. That's why I called that official attendance of 20,205 "announced" in my game story. Unlike last Saturday, individual game tickets will be sold at the stadium, along with season tickets.

Garcia doesn't anticipate another radio conflict issue with 1080 WHIM carrying another game at the same time, either this week or with the Duke game that's been moved back an hour to 7 p.m. That was nearly an embarrassment for the program that thankfully got solved.

Personally, I kind of wondered why FIU wasn't on 640 AM or 940 AM, two pure sports stations trying to establish themselves as a player in this market alongside WQAM and 790 The Ticket. Get shows for the football and men's basketball coaches, at least. Get a weekly bloc of time where a host talks FIU sports with callers. And, when I'm driving to a game, either as a fan or a reporter, I like to hear pregame shows. The only good part about the 45-minute-to-one-hour creep during rush hour along Highway 417 from downtown Ottawa to now-Scotiabank Place for Panthers-Senators games -- more agonizing than I-95 or the Dolphin at rush hour -- was hearing part of the two-hour pregame show. Kind of blah hearing a lawyer program two hours before kickoff as I've heard on WHIM.

Enclosed (Not Domed) Stadium in 2012, T.Y., Bjelica POWs, Grace Under Fire

Time for FIU to get its house in order. Texas A&M's waiting to join the SEC harem, the Pac 12's talking with other schools and holes will be created that conferences will want to fill.

FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said today after this football season, FIU Stadium's north side bleachers will be demolished and replaced by seating that fully encloses the stadium. The project will begin No. 13, the day after FIU's final regular season game, against FAU, and will be finished in time for the 2012 season. There will be north side suites and second Stadium Club.

The full expansion to 45,000 seats with a second deck is a few years down the road.

"This is needed right now," Garcia said. "We need to finish out our stadium."

"A huge step. The parallels of the program, the facilities, our university are remarkable," head football coach Mario Cristobal said. "Everything is continually going forward at 100 mph. It's a very strong statement by our administration, one that we're very thankful and privileged to have, that football and this university, building that camaraderie, that tradition are very very important to this university community. As a football coach, I'm as fired up as you can imagine. That was the final piece of the stadium for now."

Garcia said of making the stands ring the field completely, "This will be an important recruiting tool for Coach Cristobal," but what he didn't mention was the bigger picture recruiting tool -- making FIU a more attractive school to recruit to a conference as the puzzle squares shift with conference realignment. The actual number of seats won't change much, but the aesthetic and feel will. It'll look like a college stadium instead of a Texas-sized high school stadium.

Though rain ruined the season opener crowd, FIU's got over 11,000 season ticket holders now and the Central Florida game is nearly sold out. That game's expected to be FIU's largest home crowd in the program's 10-season history.

T.Y. Hilton won the Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week award after rolling up a national best 283 yards of all-purpose yards against North Texas. Middle Tennessee State's Eric Russell got the Defensive Player of the Week nod after 13 tackles, 11 solo, a sack and an intercetion that he returned 34 yards in MTSU's choke againt (ugh) Purdue. Western Kentucky punter Hendrix Brakefield was the Special Teams Player of the Week. He averaged 44.6 yards per punt on eight punts against Kentucky and had two downed inside Kentucky's 10. FIU's nominees were Hilton, linebacker Winston Fraser (11 tackles) and kicker Jack Griffin. I voted for Hilton, Russell and Brakefield, although I almost went for Fraser over Russell. 

The situation with free safety Chuck Grace lingers, as of right now. Some resolution might come in the next two days. Expect Terrance Taylor, who had four tackles Thursday, to play for Grace when Grace's fourth quarter head shot against North Texas costs him game time against Louisville this Friday. Grace will get some punishment from the Sun Belt. They can't give him a pass, not with the pressure on the authorities at all levels of football to address hits to the head and the ever increasing knowlege of the damage those hits can do.

FIU came through Thursday healthy. Louisville quarterback Will Stein's left ankle had him in a walking boot, but he should play Friday. Center Mario Benavides and defensive end B.J. Butler are out. Defensive tackle Brandon Dunn didn't dress in Louisville's 21-9 win against Murray State and is questionable for Friday.

Up in that part of the country, they think of Florida International as one of those schools you see advertising on Judge Judy or Judge Joe Brown. So Eric Crawford of The Courier-Journal, Louisville's newspaper of record since the days when jockeys in The Kentucky Derby were black, is taking some guff for picking FIU by 7. He's being accused of being a Kentucky homer. Loyalties are so divided between Louisville, Kentucky and Indiana in the C-J's coverage area -- The Hoosier State is across the Ohio River from downtown -- and so emotional that the paper actually used to make sure each school received the same number of inches of coverage to insulate itself against favoritism charges.

VOLLEYBALL

The volleyball team went 2-2 over the weekend at The Blue Raider Bash at Middle Tennessee State, beating Austin Peay and East Tennessee State and losing to Auburn and Missouri. Individually, Jovana Bjelica racked up 76 kills in 15 sets, 35 digs and nine blocks, good enough to be named to the All-Tournament Team and the Sun Belt's Player of the Week.

 

Few thoughts from FIU 41, North Texas 16.

Sorry this postgame blog didn’t get up last night. It was post-midnight by the time I left Camp Mitch, I still had to drive back to South Beach, the kid’s first day of this school year is today and I’m the Morning Mussolini in getting her ready. For Saturday night games and road games, I expect to have this up late night.

So this is coming to you live from Cushman School Primary School Parent Orientation on three hours sleep.

The game story is at http://www.miamiherald.com/sports.

After Thursday’s 41-16 win, FIU players recalled the similarity to the season’s first official practice. That afternoon, the weather horn ran the team off the field and under the bleachers, then summoned them back. Several times. Back then, I talked to players who said this would help keep whatever minor problems that cropped up during the season from derailing what they wanted to do.

Well, the horn took charge late Thursday afternoon again. Requests to clear the stands and the field came soon after. And FIU players who had been through all of this several times over the last month changed gears, reset their emotional peaks and just dealt with it. OK, there was some head-banging in the locker room according to T.Y. Hilton.

Meanwhile, North Texas couldn’t have been happy. New coaching staff, inexperienced quarterback, young team playing a talented, more established team on the road…give that team boring routine. They’ve got enough gears to shift. The dampening of the crowd, literally and in size, counted as the only bright spot for North Texas in the pregame stop-start. 

Pete Garcia looked at the wet and what could've been a nice crowd with the same look I had two days after we put our Hemingway, Caruso, asleep (his ashes sit on my side of the desk). The FIU athletic director grew up here. He knows what rain does to the best of sporting events down here, exponentially so for a weeknight sporting event at the on-campus facility of a commuter school in a circle of suburbia traffic hell. Garcia also knows what rain does to South Florida traffic. I heard some horrifying drive times from colleagues. I wonder how many people got part of the way there in the crawling traffic and said, “Forget this.”

The student sections got packed, but the rest of the crowd could’ve carpooled in a West Kendall mom van.

As for the game…

FIU’s quickness inside on defense just destroyed North Texas’ line. That gave running back Lance Dunbar no chance. Dunbar bounced outside for a couple of gains, but spent most of the night carrying some member of the front seven, usually linebacker Winston Fraser. North Texas quarterback Derek Thompson isn’t ready to be the I-beam upside the head of a team like FIU, especially down 28-0 early. At least four times, he floated throws a breath late that nearly became pick sixes.

Brelan Chancellor averaged 28.0 per kickoff return last year for North Texas. That said, the kickoff coverage needed to be more consistent. When kicker Jack Griffin makes two tackles or was the most dependable special teams tackler, as was the case last night, few gold stars get handed out for coverage.

Not much more can be said about T.Y. Hilton. He's an opposing coaches' nightmare because of what he can do but also because of what's around him -- a grinding running game, other receivers who can make tough catches or turn a little into a lot. On his 60-yard touchdown catch, the safety meandered toward Wayne Times, taking away the corner's help on Hilton. Later.

  

FIU head coach Mario Cristobal listed Darriet Perry as the starter at running back. I suspected that was out of respect for Perry as a leader and a senior. If you listened closely to Cristobal, you could hear his love for Rhodes’ runner’s instincts and vision. Sure enough, Rhodes got the bulk of the work early before they used Perry to batter a North Texas defense that got used to Rhodes’ shiftiness.

The best runs aren’t always the longest. NFL Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett broke the only 99-yard run in NFL history, but he’s often said if there was one play that would be next to his Hall bust, it was a 4-yard touchdown run against the then-St. Louis Cardinals (at 30 seconds in the video). Barring injury, Rhodes will make many runs this season longer than his 19-yard touchdown run Thursday. I doubt he’ll make any that demonstrate more running talent.

 

Cristobal hoped to sucker punch North Texas with freshman cornerback/kick returner Richard Leonard. Leonard had a solid game both on defense and special teams. He had the first of the near interceptions that would’ve been returned for scores, in the second quarter of his college career. He broke well on the ball, got to it the same time as the receiver and just couldn’t hold on while outfighting the receiver. The same play a few games from now, he’ll be there a quarter step quicker and he’ll be heading the other way with the ball.

Louisville got up on Murray State early Thursday then came home with the win, although not as eased up as FIU. I didn't DVR it. Hopefully, I'll snag a replay of it so I can do a full tracking of the game and give a decent scouting report.

So Happy Together -- FIU extends Turtle Thomas' deal

FIU has given baseball coach Henry "Turtle" Thomas a new five-year deal that'll run out after the 2016 season. Thomas was working on a contract that ran out after the 2014 season.

"We're just being proactive," FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said. "We're trying to keep good coaches and he's done a great job here. I still feel he's the best college baseball coach in America. I think he's going to take us to the College World Series and championships. He knows how to do the whole package."

Garcia lauded Thomas' success on the field (130-104-1, 2010 Sun Belt title, NCAA Regional appearances each of the last two years) and off (the 2011 Academic Progress Report score was 990, the program's highest ever).

By the way, if 2016 sounds familiar, that's also when football coach Mario Cristobal's deal runs out and, as Garcia himself pointed out, his own.

"Somebody could swoop in and pay a buyout and get your coach, but I want to make sure the valuable pieces here stay here as long as possible," he said.

What he didn't say is if all three are still around in 2016 -- an IF the size of the national debt -- this creates a nice situation for them if they choose to act as an informal unit, notwithstanding Garcia being theoretically Cristobal and Thomas' direct superior.

More after this moment from the WABAC machine:

 

Another newsy tidbit: Garcia also said the school already has sold over 10,000 season tickets for football and has surpassed last year's final number.

Futbol news: an Aug. 29 home game against Florida Tech was added to the FIU women's soccer schedule Monday. That season starts Friday at Stetson, and we'll be giving that team some blog love in the next couple of days.

 

DeJuan Wright Tweets that he suffered a knee injury

Just as I filed the below football portion of this blog and cut off my computer to plunge into REM sleep, FIU's leading scorer and rebounder last season, DeJuan Wright, tweeted this on his Twitter account, @JustWright14, just after midnight:

"Partial tear in my MCL..." followed by a three-letter acronym usually written in disbelief or anger that translates, loosely, as "what the heck?"

Wright, a 6-3 senior guard from Detroit, averaged a team-high 30.3 minutes per game; 14.5 points; 6.7 rebounds; and 1.7 steals per game last season for the 11-19 Golden Panthers. He also shot a team-high .534 from the field and his .469 shooting percentage from three-point range was the best on the team among those who attempted more than one three-pointer a game.

Now back to the less newsy, more football portion of this blog (not often you'll read that sentence in mid-August)...

This blog should've been done hours ago, while I was awaiting my Bacon Burger at the campus Chili's after somehow failing to find the Subway (which I passed as I left -- I felt like such a freshman). Instead, I surfed the 'net and combed my notes for inspiration and energy. I also wondered how a Media Day with Spanish language media, a Cuban-American head coach who works for a Cuban-American athletic director who just got Captain Cuban-American to be his radio color analyst didn't have cafe cubano.

My failure to caffeine up -- real world sucked up the time I would've used to stop at my favorite place on South Beach -- can be blamed for my lousy questions that didn't often get the players to break from their well-coached repetition of the gospel. But a few nuggets did emerge, aside from the couple I used in the choppy story on leadership already up on http://www.miamiherald.com/sports.

(If you want to read the story, that's your business. But, remember, I just told you it was there. I did not recommend it.)

Women's soccer season starts Friday in DeLand against Stetson.

Cristobal claims as far as camp injuries, "nothing really significant" that should make anyone "miss a game or two." That means either safety Jack Halley's testing came back OK and he doesn't have a concussion or Halley's testing came back saying concussion and Cristobal forgot. Because, on concussions, nobody knows anything about timetables.

T.Y. Hilton said he texted former teammate Anthony Gaitor before the latter's first preseason game, Friday night for Tampa Bay against Kansas City. "Just do you. just like college, but now it's the next level," Hilton said his text read. "You are on a different team with a different jersey. Be the Anthony Gaitor I know you can be."

Gaitor had a sack, a tackle for loss, a quarterback hurry and a pass knocked down. Hilton also was in the text tube with wide receiver Greg Ellingson. Playing for Jacksonville, Ellingson had two passes thrown his way. Neither were completed.

Before talking to us, Hilton spent a fair amount of time with Rick Sanchez, who was present with his two sons.

Asking a few pass catchers what they noticed different about Wesley Carroll this year, tight end Colt Anderson said, "Definitely see more confidence in him than last year. More leadership." Wide receiver Willis Wright added quietly, "A lot more pride." Interesting addendum...

Cristobal on Tourek Williams: "When he's on, when he's in shape, he's as good as any defensive player in the conference."

Cristobal said he wanted the offense to be a 50 percent split between run and pass. Coaches love to say that, but it always comes down to "what don't you defend well?" and "How well do we do what we do?" If you run and pass well, then it's up to the defense what you do. If the last run a school stopped was a moonshine run, pound the rock. If the defensive backs look like Urkel and Woody Allen, spend the day in the air. 

Fading to black. I'm out. We'll try to be better tomorrow.

 

 

Playing dominoes in West Miami-Dade...

There's not much from Saturday morning's practice to report other than the plethora of orange no-contact jerseys.

Among those who weren't hurt before Friday's scrimmage, safety Cain Elliot was still on crutches, of course, with a left ankle sprained Friday; Safety Justin Halley, who had an interception in the scrimmage, took a shot to the head and sat out Saturday's practice; wide receiver Mike Jean-Louis still couldn't seem to bend his left leg, on which the thigh was tightly wrapped; defensive lineman Andrew Mattox had a left thigh wrapped; defensive tackle Isame Faciane also was on the sidelines.

Butch Davis dropped by again with AD Pete Garcia. Mario Cristobal started coaching as a graduate assistant under Davis at the University of Miami. They exchanged much friendly yakkety-yak after practice, along with quarterbacks Wesley Carroll and Jake Medlock.

"Certainly so many things from his blueprint we have applied here," Cristobal said. "Obviously, a person I'm very grateful to and thankful for. It's awesome to see him. He's as good as it gets." 

Davis' presence and the way he recruited South Florida while at the University of Miami brings up the irresistable question, what if FIU has an eight-win or better season? Cristobal's contract buyout isn't so onerous as to keep a big-time school serious about him -- or, rather, that school's boosters -- from ponying up the $453,000 emancipation fee. There's something boosters and money can't buy, however.

As mentioned in a previous post, the Cristobals have two very young children, Daddy Cristobal puts in the marathon days of most college coaches (paranoid control freaks by nature) and Mama Cristobal's very active in the community. For such parents, the extended family support system can be a serious factor in deciding whether or not the grass is greener elsewhere, even if there's more of the long green involved. Yeah, money can buy you a parent support system of nannies, but not everybody's comfortable with that. You can build a parent support system of trusted friends. But, there really isn't anything like having the grandparents who love to spoil the kids, the aunts and uncles who'll turn a mall trip into as much fun as an afternoon at Disney or the cousins who are like siblings. That's raising the kids and, when we're talking coaches, the wife's doing the lion's share of that.

I'm not saying they'll never go anywhere because of that. I'm saying don't discount it as having weight. Current Dolphins defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, an NFL coach who was raised the son of longtime NFL coach Dick Nolan, as quoted by John Feinstein's "Next Man Up:"

"I tell young coaches that they better be sure when they take a new job that their wife can be happy. See, the coaches have it easy. We get someplace and we're spending all our time doing what we love: coaching...We're not the ones who have to find new schools and new doctors and a new place to shop and send out change-of-address stuff and get phones hooked up. Your wife is doing all the work, so you better be sure she's comfortable with whereever you're going, because if she's not, everyone is going to be miserable."

Ye who have had to live with an unhappy wife know whereof he speaks.

If Cristobal does go, nothing that happened at North Carolina would deter FIU from hiring Davis, whose career surely will restart somewhere in a couple of years. FIU would be a much more inviting place to Davis if it were in a better conference.

And that leads us to the dominoes game.

Texas A&M's trying to move from the Big 12 (which isn't 12 anymore) to the Southeastern Conference. As one college football suit said Friday, "they'll need a partner." The early reports had Florida State, Clemson and Missouri all making the move to the SEC with the Aggies. Outside of A&M, everybody is playing the denial game like those guys who take the lie detector tests on The Maury Show. Some of them are telling the truth, but somebody's lying. Let's say A&M heads for the SEC with Florida State, a strong football-good enough basketball school that's in SEC country more than ACC country.

If it's FSU and/or Clemson, the ACC will start looking for another school. The ACC actually cares about academics, so they're not just going to grab any revenue sport powerhouse or big TV market school feeling like they need to make a move. They might go Big East courting (UConn? Rutgers?).

If the Big East gets nicked as the dominoes fall, don't expect FIU to get a "How do you do?" from that conference. FIU Stadium needs to be enclosed. Going on experience gained by watching 21 years of venue construction in South Florida, I'd put that project at 18 months from now. For the Big East, it probably needs to be enlarged with a second deck. FIU's athletic department has other beefing up and straightening up to do before thinking Big East. 

The Big 12's already going to lose A&M. They lost Nebraska. Oklahoma and Texas can hold that conference together. If they do, Houston's already being talked about as a strong possibility for replacing A&M. I think Texas and their $300 million Longhorn Network that they can't take with them to the Pac-10 or Big Ten will start thinking about life as an independent.

Houston's in Conference USA. So is Central Florida, which the Big East might want for the Orlando market if it goes hunting for a replacement school.

If you've got to replace one or two big schools, the No. 10 and/or No. 19 TV market, who do you do it with? With another big enrollment school that gets the vast majority of its students from an area that combines two TV markets (Miami-Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce) into a top 10 market.

That's when the Conference USA folks call the Mitch Madique Campus.

 

Mike Baiamonte: from FIU hoops PA to the Heat to FIU football PA

And, now, the circle is complete for Mike Baiamonte.

Baiamonte, whose signature voice and catchphrases have become Miami Heat home game trademarks over the last 21 years, began working the public address with the first FIU men's basketball team in 1981-82. This season, the FIU '86 grad will assume the PA for FIU's home football games.

Baiamonte said he "absolutely loved" doing the PA for last season's opener against Rutgers and was thrilled when athletic director Pete Garcia approached him recently about doing it permanently. So far, there are no scheduling conflicts with the Heat game schedule. The Heat special community events might be another story. Baiamonte said Garcia, "has been gracious about understanding the priority if there is a conflict." (The Heat trump).

As you'll find on this blog (probably to a nauseating degree), little fascinates me like time's passage and the changes it brings. Sometimes, I sit in the office of my South Beach apartment and count the buildings that didn't exist when we moved in here or when I first moved to South Beach. I did the same thing sitting in the FIU stadium press box during Monday's scrimmage with the buildings on campus. I counted 10 buildings that weren't here when I covered FIU before. I asked Baiamonte if he gets similar feelings. 

"Every time I go back to the campus, usually for a sporting event, I think, 'This is not the same place I went to school,' he said. "When I went to school, there were five buildings on campus. There's more parking garages now than there were buildings then. And I'm at a football game at an on campus facility...people used to fly airplanes there. You used to park your car there so you could walk to class."

And as for sports, Baiamonte had the mike for the first 12 years of FIU basketball. They used to play at Miami-Dade's Kendall campus, then called Dade-South, and that was probably their best home court before Sunblazer Arena/Golden Panther Arena/US Century Bank Arena/Whatever Too Big Too Fail Buys US Century Bank Arena.

"We'd play about anywhere we could find a place," he said. "We played at Miami Christian High School in Sweetwater. We played at the James L. Knight Center. That was the most surreal venue I've ever worked."

Because the Knight Center was set up for concerts, the crowd was behind Baiamonte, the court in front of him and a curtain across from him.

Give Garcia credit for stomping the gas when the engine looks strong. With a potentially fantastic football season on the horizon, Garcia pushed for the Hilton4Heisman campaign; brought in Rick Sanchez as radio color analyst, a move guaranteed to get attention and could be at least fun; got the Mario Cristobal extension done; and hired Baiamonte to add a sound many South Florida sports fans now associate with winning and a cool, party atmosphere.

It could all wind up like Senna at Imola. Hilton could get injured or just have a blah season. The close games that went FIU's way last year could go the other way. Sanchez could get too blustery, or, worse, just be flat and boring. But you don't go from outsider to out in front without putting yourself out there somewhat.

By the way, check out today's story on night vs. day FIU football at http://www.miamiherald.com/sports. Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/DavidJNeal.

Cristobal signs extension through 2016 the night before practice begins.

So, as you can read in this morning's Miami Herald, Tuesday night, head football coach Mario Cristobal and FIU extended their marriage through June 2016, which is longer than my daughter will live if she ruins another one of our surroundsound speakers that she's never supposed to touch.

As far as a potential divorce, unless Cristobal violates his contract in some way, FIU would have to pony up two years salary or 906,366 to Cristobal. If Cristobal wanted to better deal FIU and move on to where he's not the fourth school in a two-school town, it'll cost him a year's salary, $453,183 to buy his way out of the contract. That's double the $200,000 it reportedly would cost Middle Tennessee State coach Rick Stockstill if he caught crazy and wanted out of a deal that could pay him $1 million a year in a few years.

In the Sun Belt, Cristobal's new base salary of $453,183 puts him behind North Texas' Dan McCarney, who goes into his first season with the Mean Green with a $475,000 base salary. Both McCarney (12 years as FBS/Division I head coach) and Stockstill (temptations from elsewhere) have bonuses packages that put almost another $100,000 on their deals before incentives. Cristobal received a $50,000 bonus Tuesday and will get another one next June 12. In addition, each June 30, he gets a "retention bonus," of $25,000.

(That's how fast your life can change when you're a coach or professional athlete -- you get roster bonuses and retention bonuses, schools and teams way of saying, "Way to not get fired!")  

With the plans they have for the stadium and hopes for the athletic program, FIU not stupid enough to do the euphemistic "go in a different direction" just when the football program's marching properly  since going Division I/FBS/FDS/Whatever They're Calling Big Boy Football These Days. FIU was motivated.

Cristobal likes working at FIU, so close to where he grew up. His wife's active in the community. These two busy people have a toddler and an infant, which means having the family support system within babysitting distance is invaluable. And any coach in that situation who doesn't think about that will be reminded of it by his wife. Cristobal was motivated to get this done, too, besides the obvious benefits to his career, his bank account and recruiting.

Cristobal wants to take care of his assistants, too, so he took a little less salary scratch. There's a $112,000 bump in the budget for the football program that was earmarked for various things, including some extra jack for the assistants. The coordinators have contracts. The rest have salaries, but not contracts.

Anyway, I'm writing this late at night. And posting it early in the morning. And in a nod to both those times...

 

 

Rick Sanchez to announce FIU football on radio

So I'm standing in Target with an armload of leggings for the kid, wondering if she'll like the Sinestro or Abin Sur action figures when my cellphone exploded with News of the Say What? Rick Sanchez will be doing color on FIU's football radio broadcasts this season.

"Are you sure it's the same Rick Sanchez?" I asked the first caller. I've been in South Florida 22 years, so I don't assume any Sanchez, Garcia, Gomez, Fernandez, Hernandez or Gonzalez the other person's speaking of is the one that comes to my mind.

Yep, that Rick Sanchez, I was assured. The Rick Sanchez who epitomized Channel 7's stylized, highly dramatic, semi-apocalyptic news delivery that ruled the local news timeslots in the late 1980s and early 1990s (I've always thought some were riveted by their state-of-the-art graphics, scary teases and great video while others watched it as a parody of TV news, a sort of nightly Weekend Update). The Rick Sanchez who kneeled over a map of Cuba the same way he kneeled in the streets of Miami over chalk outlines or blood stains as a Channel 7 crime reporter in the Cocaine Cowboys era.

The same Rick Sanchez who rose to CNN, got his own show, then got booted when he went OFF during a radio interview. He claimed he was picked on by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart because he was a Latino and then brushed off the idea that Jewish people were an "oppressed minority" by saying that those who run CNN and many networks are just like Stewart.

The Rick Sanchez with 137,221 Twitter followers, some of whom might tune in just to hear how he does the games. And FIU AD Pete Garcia definitely had that on his mind.

I got home, threw some turkey marsala down my neck and called Jorge Sedano (follow him on Twitter, http://www.twitter.com/SedanoShow), the former football color guy. Sedano couldn't stop laughing. It actually made his life easier because he's got a weekend show on Channel 4. As he said, it's hard to have a weekend gig and have to ask for multiple weekends off.
"I had a great time going it," Sedano said. "It was fun. I want to thank all the guys over there. It was great. But the reality is, I would be a tough position because I would have to juggle my weekend show on CBS-4 and games."

FIU told Sedano they were dumping Jeremy Marks-Peltz (http://www.twitter.com/jmpeltz on Twitter) as play-by-play man, but wanted to know if he wanted to stay on to do color. Sedano, the morning drive host on 790 The Ticket, tried to argue for keeping JMP. When that didn't work, he said he'd stay on the broadcasts only if he could do play-by-play. Next thing Sedano had heard, FIU had brought Sanchez on board.

A couple of hours later, Sanchez called. I spent about an hour on the phone with him, easily the best hour of my afternoon/evening.

We yakked about myriad topics: the media, his image, hard wood floors vs. carpet for pets, the Dolphins, FIU, not necessarily in that order. Some of that wound up in the story that'll be in the Local section of Friday's paper or online now.

When he talked about what happened, he said the general point of his radio rant was there were too many people in the national media who came from the same ethno-economic background. There needed to be more diversity.

He laughed off the idea of any tension with FIU President Mark Rosenberg over his comments about Jewish people in the media by saying he and Rosenberg have talked often and have a great relationship.

I knew he had an affinity for FIU, but he truly adores the school. It's one of the reasons he's working for free. And he's a football nut -- played in high school, partial scholarship to Minnesota State Moorhead, still calls folks he knows in the Dolphins organization to obsess about the team. He went to several road games last year, including the Christmas Day bowl game.

(Now, that's a fan. I've never loved any team enough to want to be in Detroit on Christmas Day. That's like spending Easter in Chernobyl. My mother lived in Detroit for almost 24 years and once said from her hospital bed as I walked in, "Hockey and me in the hospital -- that's the only things that'll get my son to Detroit.")

Why Sanchez loves FIU is obvious: he's a proud Cuban-American and feels FIU's the South Florida campus that reached out the most to minorities, particularly Hispanics. That Mario Cristobal is head coach and Sanchez's longtime friend Garcia is AD only further bursts his buttons. He loved doing the CNN piece on FIU, with its roster of white kids, black kids and "kids with last names ending in Zs," he said, going to play mighty Alabama.

And when it comes to football, I think that pride in Miami and being raised a Cuban-American in Hialeah plays a role in his zeal. That's me saying that, not him.

Young Cuban-Americans reading this blog -- especially the ones juggle three fantasy football teams or have the NFL and college dish packages or spend their down time arguing T.Y. Hilton vs. Leonard Hankerson -- might be shocked to hear what I heard when I first got down here in 1989.

"Cubans can't play football."
"Cubans don't want to play football -- they're too into cars and they're not tough enough."
"The Dolphins will be in trouble in 15 years because there's going to be so many Cubans in South Florida and so few white and black people, there won't be anybody to be Dolphins fans."

Those folks, some of whom were high school head coaches, ignored one fact: assimilation happens.
So imagine the stuff Sanchez had to hear in the mid-1970s playing what's still the most American of the three team sports we truly love. As a black guy who grew up playing hockey, I can tell you that sometimes when you hear stuff like that, it just makes you embrace the game/activity even more almost to rub it in the face of the prejudiced. And, then, it's not just in your blood, it's in your bone marrow and you're embracing it so much because you can't let go.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out on the air with Sanchez and play-by-play man Tony Calatayud. As I said to Sanchez, he was always so "earnest" when delivering the news at Channel 7, the pauses and phrases weighed down with such gravity. That actually would be funny as play-by-play. As color, it would be a disaster. Seeing as how he's doing color instead of play-by-play, I'm betting we'll see more of the fired up show-hosting Sanchez rather than the anchorman Sanchez.

Garcia said no matter how this works out this year with Sanchez, the former broadcaster will be part of the FIU program going forward. I'm sure. Sanchez has one son at FIU with another getting ready to enroll. Being on the broadcasts gives him a chance to spend about the perfect amount of time with his college-age kids (perfect for the kids.)

I asked Sanchez if he would move back here. He now lives in Atlanta with his wife and a dog that pees on the floor (hence the earlier floor topic). He said from a business standpoint, though he's not chasing on-air jobs now, he insisted, LA, New York and Chicago would be better.
"But the heart says get back to your roots," Sanchez said.
He recalled a recent drive around Miami with someone and how every other streetcorner retained a memory for him -- personal or professional from those years on the crime beat.
"I do think within the next year, I'm probably going to make a move."

Anchoring an extended shift while covering natural disasters or big stories isn't easy, but live sports is an animal that's constantly yapping at a broadcaster's heels like the product of a Marvin Gaye night between a greyhound and a Doberman. Sanchez hasn't done sports before. Some days, it won't be pretty.

But, like those Channel 7 newscasts of yore, it'll never be boring.

 

Herald Exclusive: FIU AD Garcia signs five-year extension

Over on MiamiHerald.com, we broke this pretty significant piece of news about the future of FIU athletics (contrary to what you may have read on message boards):

    While the University of Miami’s six-week-old search for a new athletic director continues to drag on,     cross-town FIU has taken steps to keep its department’s leader in place for years to come.

    Last week, FIU athletic director Pete Garcia signed a five-year extension to a contract that would     have expired in October, providing the Miami native with stability, more money – and a new title.

    Garcia is now FIU’s executive director of sports and entertainment, putting him in charge of far more     than just the school’s intercollegiate athletics program.

What do you think about the deal? Good for the university? Feel free to comment below.

Ponce Can Recruit; More Baseball

TAMPA -- Apparently, FIU baseball brings out a much more spirited debate than some people thought. The 2010 season is just 6 days away when the Panthers open next Friday, Feb. 19 against Maryland at University Park Stadium.

Went out to another intrasquad game the other day and this time caught four innings. Since FIU baseball brings out such passion in some of our readers, there will be a comprehensive FIU baseball blog on the next post. And you can look for the Herald's FIU baseball preview in next Thursday's paper.

But for now will let you catch your breath from the last post whether you were talking baseball or talking about which school has the better apple pie in their food court.

Yours truly is in Tampa for the weekend working a soccer tournament, but here's a little mix of FIU sports stuff going on in case you missed it.

Three members of the FIU football coaching staff are among some of the candidates being considered for the open running backs coaching job. Among them are special teams coach Apollo Wright, who coached Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook at Villanova. Grad assistant Dennis Smith and director of football ops Juan Navarro.

Congratulations to FIU receivers coach Frank Ponce (above left making a "W" sign for Willis Wright, thanks to Alex J. Hernandez photo) who was named by ESPN as the top recruiter in the Sun Belt for securing ManChild to join the Panthers. Former FIU OC James Coley, now the OC at Florida State, was named the ACC's top recruiter. Click on this link: Top College Football Recruiters  for more info and notice that it looks like ESPN used a mug shot of Coley wearing an FIU coach's shirt.

HOOPING IT UP

A pretty inaccurate article in the new times about FIU hoops. Hey, we're in America and you can express whatever opinion you want, but when you use facts (i.e.: actual numbers and actual people that said certain things -- "Isiah Thompson") at least get those right in a story.

PG responded to the article on Friday and here is a short story that is expected to run in the Herald at some point:

   FIU athletic director Pete Garcia fired back at a recent New Times article on FIU basketball.

   Garcia noted several inaccuracies about the story which chronicles Golden Panthers coach Isiah Thomas’s first season and the program’s ticket sales.

   Among some of the misinformation from the article that has Garcia perturbed is FIU basketball’s average attendance numbers.

   Garcia is also upset about the article’s writer misidentifying FIU President Mark Rosenberg as the person to wrongfully introduce Thomas at the coach’s hiring news conference.

   Former FIU provost Ronald Berkman, now the president at Cleveland State University, introduced Thomas as “Isiah Thompson” at the April 15, 2009 news conference.

   Rosenberg was not working at FIU at the time. Since the Times article was published Wednesday, the error was corrected to Berkman mis-introducing Thomas.

   “This is a classic example of irresponsible and sloppy journalism from someone who uses inaccurate numbers and inaccurately quotes President Rosenberg with introducing Isiah Thomas at his hiring press conference which he never did,” Garcia said. “This is the end result and it’s unfortunate, because the quality of journalism in South Florida is among the best in the nation and this one story won’t ruin the good journalism that takes place in South Florida on a daily basis.”

   The Times article states “. . . the basketball team has averaged a paltry 120 attendees per home game this season. The arena seats 6,000.”

   U.S. Century Bank Arena, which seats 5,000, has averaged 1,163 fans per FIU basketball game this season, according to figures FIU ticket operations manager Jeremy Lamb provided the Miami Herald.

   Lamb added it’s an increase from the 2008-09 FIU basketball season’s average attendance of 487 fans per game. Lamb said FIU has also sold 46 of 50 courtside seats added to the arena this season.

   The Panthers are 7-20 this season, but Thomas has signed the No. 17 2010 recruiting class in the nation.

 

WARMING UP IN THE BULLPEN

 

Catch your breath yet about FIU baseball? Apple pie? (Cracker Barrel has a pretty good one). Ok, then.

 

FIU was picked to finish third in the Sun Belt by the conference's coaches on Friday. Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky were picked ahead of the Panthers. But don't take the SBC coaches word for it, you decide in our poll question below.

 

FIU first baseman Tim Jobe (left, thanks AJH photo and for Zeke photo above, right) was selected to the preseason All-Sun Belt team. Jobe was a member of the 2009 All-Sun Belt team.

 

Several publications and websites are picking FIU baseball to finish near the top of the conference, but I think you have to wait and see how the Panthers starting rotation and bullpen shake out.

 

FIU is going to miss projected No. 2 starter Logan Dodds (academically ineligible). Dodds -- like Scott Rembisz 2 years ago -- was the Florida JUCO Pitcher of the Year last season at Miami Dade College. R.J. Fondon, Corey Polizzano and Daniel DeSimone are going to have to step up.

 

A bigger concern could be the Panthers bullpen. It could be a closer-by-committee until someone nails down the job. Among the candidates are freshman Alberto Cardenas, last season's part-time closer Jorge Marban and third baseman/pitcher Garrett Wittels.

 

Eric Berkowitz (a.k.a "Harry Potter" as his teammates call him, because of the Potter-like glasses he wears) is likely moving to middle relief where he had some pretty good outings last season.

 

PANTHER PAWSE

 

Will have a Happy Blog Hour 2-for-1 special in LIVE BLOGS  next week. Log on to the GPP on Thursday, Feb. 18 at 7:54 p.m. for a LIVE BASKETBALL BLOG of FIU/Hooters basketball when the Hooters from Del Boca Vista Phase 2 visit the Bank for game two of the Pat Riley Classic this season.

 

Then log on to the GPP the next night, Feb. 19 at 6:56 p.m. for a LIVE BLOG BASEBALL of FIU's season opener against Maryland from the House that Mike Lowell Built. Yes, I know she is one of the FIU Witches.

 

Q&A

 

Gooch7: Pete: Who will the closer be? Any input about him?

 

PP: Hope the two paragraphs above at the end of the baseball section of this post answers your question.

 

Yandro: Pete, thanks for the update. Do we know who the starters will be come Opening Night, or are positions still up in the air with a week left?

 

PP: Competition still going on at several positions. Will have TT come on here next week and give you an update straight from the head coach's mouth.

 

Wes Kendall: Hey Pete, I've heard rumors that Rosenberg is rebranding FIU, which might again lead to another logo change/color change. Have you heard anything?

 

PP: Nothing to it. The university changed their logo to block letters not too long ago and the athletic program went to block letters with a more fierce Panther just 2 years ago.

 

 

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