OT: Former Alabama Quarterback Phillip Sims is off the team at Virginia
I feel bad for Sims, seemed like he was on the verge of being one of the better QB's in the ACC. But just like ND's Golson situation, the words "Student" and "Athlete" go hand in hand. Thoughts?
Sometimes we get caught up in college athletics, especially football, and need to be reminded of the relationship between the words "student" and "athlete" that you mentioned. You can go to school to play ball, yes, but you're there for school as well. Good for coach London but you hate to see a potential impact player not only hurt your team because of academic issues but potentially miss out on an otherwise great future.
Priceless.
I can't decide if he's a bigger moron for thinking that or for wanting the whole world to know he thinks that.
Or for spelling his own name wrong in his twitter handle...
A balding Urban Meyer would be kind of funny actually
I think London can be really good for them. He's recruiting well, he did great at Richmond and isn't this just his third year? I hope he gets a few more years at least
Yeah, I don't really think he's on the hot seat. He's brought in a lot of good recruits over the past few years (Demetrious Nicholson, Tim Harris, Quin Blanding, some good OLB/DE types, etc.) and has a shot at guys like Andrew Brown. I think it would be a mistake to axe him before those guys have a chance to get on campus and develop at least a little bit.
Unfortunately, in the boardrooms where trustees, presidents, VP's, and AD's meet, college athletics has become "strictly business." Condsequently, coaches don't get the five years that Bo Schembechler said they should get to fully imprint their own vision on a program. Sadly, AD's with enough vision to give a coach 5 years are few and far between.
For now, three years is the "new five years."
One thing to note about his recruiting- there's some chatter that this could really hurt his recruiting in the VA Beach area. Apparently, Sims' HS Coach from Oscar Smith was not happy with the way UVA 'handled Sims'. Whether that means UVA will just stop getting Oscar Smith kids or kids throughout the region; I'm not sure. But that is where they've been getting all their blue chippers recently (Harold, Blanding, Mizzell).
Some folks who are plugged into the right places are saying that the only place where UVA might suffer fallout is Oscar Smith itself. If that. "Starting to alienate himself" and "tired of his act" are the words being used to describe the Oscar Smith coach.
In other words most people in the Tidewater area (to be nitpicky, Oscar Smith is in Chesapeake, not VB, but the whole region is what we're talking about here anyway) apparently know the score, which is basically that the UVA coaches bent over backwards to give Sims his chances. If the guy at Oscar Smith wants to try and play up how UVA "handled" Sims, I don't get the impression he'll get very far with the story.
Damn that sucks. UVa needs to have a good year for London to survive I think.
London was briefly the head coach at Richmond where he won the national championship ... with the team that the previous head coach, Dave Clawson, put together. Clawson is the head coach at Bowling Green and has that program pointed in the exact right direction. I know some UVA fans who feel like they hired the wrong former Richmond head coach.
I personally think thats a bit unfair to London, but there's some truth to that ...
Sims was actually third on the depth chart coming out of Spring Ball. Unless he did something amazing during the summer (which it sounds like London was not expecting), he was probably going to be buried for a while anyway.
I saw that too, but maybe due to these academic issues he was in the doghouse, so to speak, and put last on the depth chart until he got things in order? It seemed like he was trending upward after finally being able to play and develop last year. I could be wrong, though.
I've heard that Sims was by far the most physically gifted QB they have, but he wasn't being a great leader. If we're just talking about football skills, I think Sims would be #1 pretty easily.
Yeah, but he was also wildly inconsistent. I went to the UVA -Maryland last year, where Sims came in to spell Rocco (in I believe the 2nd/3rd quarter). He made a couple of throws which really wowed the crowd with his velocity, then made a bone-headed interception that everyone saw coming. Even the touchdown he threw was right into double coverage and had no business being caught.
It's all the sort of stuff you hear about with a kid (especially a quarterback) with poor work ethic. Sometimes his physical skills would bail him out, but he was making the same mistakes over and over. I think that's what frustrated London from a football standpoint.
that there is no situation where you are set up to suceed more than in academics as an athlete at a major university. everything is laid out for your sucess, from constant free tutoring to your pick of the easiest classes and ideal class times. i know you still have to show up and perform a minimal amount of work, but its really disappointing that these kids sometimes don't know how privileged they are to be athletically gifted and be able to parlay that into something more.
Michigan and ND if you are a QB and don't feel much like attending class or doing your school work. There are plenty of options where it is easier to slide by.
The SI story contains some select quotations from David Teel's Daily Press article:
"Sims’ shortcomings weren’t limited to the classroom. Arguably the program’s most gifted quarterback, and certainly its most acclaimed, Sims dodged the grueling conditioning and tape study that define the best at his position."
It's really a shame that he seems to have been unwilling to do what was required to succeed academically and as a player, especially when you think of what he potentially brought to the table in the way of talent for a team with a QB situation in flux, or so it seemed. At the end of the day, you can't just have skills in a team game and expect to simply succeed by virtue of who you are - leadership, committment, effort and a willingness to learn and grow have to be there too.
brief initial euphoria following Sims transfer to UVA, I sobered up and realized he likely wouldn't be a great fit. Whispers of his lack of discipline and work ethic in the classroom soon followed.
Being the school it is, UVA doesn't get that type of athlete in football (but tennis, soccer, lacrosse and swimming - yeah why not), at least not often. Sims is an SEC, FSU, OSU type.
In any case, I think it's for the best - I always thought David Watford and Greyson Lambert were promising recruits.
Watford is your classic Hampton Roads ATHLETE in the Vick, Iverson mold, who held offers from UVA, VT, WVU and ECU. Athleticism alone is promising.
and Lambert is a 6'5 prototype dropback passer who is still filling out. Though a 3 star recruit his offer sheet was decent - Alabama, Miami, UVA, Clemson, Georgia, Miss st., NC st., BC, Purdue, South Carolina. http://espn.go.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/107333/greyson-lambert
Greyson f*cking Lambert - take one look at this guy and tell me doesnt at least look the part of an Alabama or perhaps UGA quarterback. Bangs! I predict he will be the best UVA qb since Matty Schaub and will date Miss Virginia.
-UVA undergrad / Michigan MBA/MPA
Wahooverine is a great name. And I'll bet you didn't have to try five times before you found a name that wasn't already taken.
Thanks. No, got it on the first time. However I didn't think of it until after I already registered with a different, dumb name. I spent about 90 minutes of my life figuring out how to change it but still use the same email address and account info. Worrrrrrth it.
I like it times a billion. Where have you been all this time?
He sounds like a perfect fit for Sparty.
So far . . .
From what I've heard, having Teresa Sullivan as president has made it less likely, not more, that UVA joins the B1G. There was a lot of talk that Sullivan's U-M ties would make it likely that she would seek out B1G membership, but the truth is she's swamped with other more important university business (as has become insanely public in the last year.) But the main point is that as a somewhat athletically minded president - more so than John Casteen, the previous guy - she is also more likely to defer to the athletic department and what they'd prefer regarding conference membership. And the athletic department at UVA has absolutely zero interest in joining the Big Ten. So she's taken guidance from them and worked (when necessary) to keep the school in the ACC and keep the ACC together rather than taking the Wallace Loh path of least resistance.
Because let's face it: Loh knew literally nothing about athletic conferences, by his own admission. "There are games" was the greatest extent of his knowledge. So he was much more easily manipulated and pliable when Jim Delany came calling. Teresa Sullivan allows the AD to have a lot more input, and from an athletic-only standpoint, B1G membership is a horrible idea for UVA.
Wanted that bad. Having both my alma maters and primary collegiate sports rooting interests in the same conference would make things real efficient for me.
But I agree - Rutgers being all around terrible aside, Virginia would have made sense for many reasons, including it's state border rivalry with Maryland. Virginia and Maryland are like a very, very poor man's Michigan and Ohio. To be clear - Maryland is analagous to OSU and Virginia is of course the good guys; the boorish, cognitively dissonant, cultural backwater that desires athletic excellence at all costs versus the noble institution of higher ed that does it with academic integirty. The fanbases dislike each other culturally as well as athletically. VA fans look down with pity and disdain upon Maryland as uneducated, classless, couch-burning, urine-throwing, cooler-poopers, while Marylanders view UVA as insufferable cheese-eating, wine-sipping, elitists. Makes for great fun. When you go to College Park for a game you will see what I mean. They have a hateabiltiy factor akin to OSU though lacking the same depth or national profile. UVA, when losing (especially to UMD or VT) take refuge in the knowledge of their irrefuable intellectual, moral and cultural superiority; may sound familiar to some here. Wahoowa and Go Blue.