Chip Shots: Even In Spring, It Comes Back to Football
April 21, 2023 at 9:01 p.m.
Chip Shots: Even In Spring, It Comes Back to Football
By Chip Davenport-
TNT is covering some of or all the NBA playoff action each night during most of the nights this week, so I’m getting a huge dose of the Inside the NBA panel.
My favorite Charles Barkley comment this week was the way he described the Minnesota Timberwolves’ underperforming twin towers, seven-footers Karl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert.
“14-feet of useless” was how Chuck described the duo, and I laughed hard enough to wake up some people in my house.
A Steam Room podcast interview with Ben Affleck by Earnie Johnson and Barkley revealed a very funny line people who see the movie AIR (about Nike securing Michael Jordan for its basketball shoe line) will enjoy.
Barkley, in 1984, was among a few athletes coming aboard Nike for shoe deals, and one character in the scene looking at Barkley’s pictures exclaimed, “Nobody wants to see Charles Barkley on T.V.!”
Talk about a hot take? Barkley is arguably one of the most compelling sports commentators on television, and one of the top two athletes in terms of being the funniest athlete on TV.
Saturday August 19, I have Ohio travel plans. Massillon High School’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, with capacity of at least 16,000 seats these days with one side covered, old school, will host a handful of high school games showcasing some of the best high school football games in the geographic region.
Center Grove, winner of three straight IHSAA Class 6A football titles, will take on Lakewood Saint Edward, winner of back-to-back state titles in Ohio’s Division I, the state’s largest enrollment class among seven division. “St. Ed” as it’s known, is an all-boys school with an enrollment of at least 850 students.
The Eagles would be a small Class 4A school in Indiana, but they would likely play in Class 6A year-in and year-out due to the IHSAA tournament success factor. This year, the program has two Ohio state commits and one Michigan commit just from its offensive line.
I’m excited to see how far Indiana big school football has come thanks to the years Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts fueled greater interest in high school football. St. Ed will give Center Grove one heck of a challenge.
My interest in St. Ed came from traveling into Cleveland on Saturday afternoons to accompany my uncle/godfather to his alma mater’s games after I played on Friday nights for my high school. His oldest brother was a classmate of talk-show host Phil Donohue (you’ll have to be pretty old to remember Phil) in the school’s first graduating class in 1953.
My cousins played football and wrestled for the Eagles, too, one of them its valedictorian in 1978. The school sent nine athletes to the NFL, Tom Cousineau and Alex Boone among the most notable.
It’s a school I always wanted to attend, but I would have had to live in Cleveland or Lakewood with one of my two uncles, and the tuition was too expensive for my parents.
The 2023 NFL Draft will be another prime-time television success this Thursday. Ever since the draft was moved to prime time, I’ve never had a conflict with chores, or with accompanying my wife to some early/mid-day event. The absence of those conflicts afforded me uninterrupted viewing time.
I listened to another Indiana Football Coaches Association (IFCA) podcast, and Fort Wayne Snider head football coach Kurt Tippman was one of the guests. Dave Baumgartner and Ted Huber, the podcast hosts, asked Tippman to update the progress of 8-man football.
The contagion has not been at a high rate, but Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian and Irvington Prep are moving to 11-man football after their first respective seasons in the 8-man game.
In the meantime, four more schools moved into 8-man football in the Hoosier State netting a gain of two teams in the sport. The expanded field of six schools will take on schools in Illinois and in Ohio to round out a full season schedule.
Tippman noted an interesting twist favorably supporting the merits of 8-man football.
Smaller schools or schools with very small program numbers who are competitive in 8-man football but must cancel part or all of their JV and freshmen seasons due to low numbers are being encouraged to take on 8-man football at sub-varsity levels.
The sub-varsity move to the 8-man game can be tricky if not all the schools in your given athletic conference experience the same issue with numbers as you experience, so the idea is easier said than done, but it’s still practical.
There are schools in the Northern Lakes Conference who have in recent years had to integrate freshmen into their junior varsity squads. This does not work well when these schools face a JV squad from Warsaw or NorthWood – two schools disparate in size but strong in program numbers – who can dress 35-40 athletes hungry for action because they watched the entire varsity game from the sideline.
Bart Curtis has been quoted in so may words saying, “We must play all of those games…” when speaking of sub-varsity programs. It’s imperative to have these kids get meaningful reps at the appropriate levels before being thrown in the varsity football cauldron in a manner the Whitko Wildcats football squad experienced in the 2022 gridiron season.
I still strongly believe the preservation and resurrection of Whitko football comparable to its better days requires and adjustment to the 8-man game. It’s not surrender, it’s rehabilitation.
Freshmen should play at appropriate sub-varsity levels to boot, and the adjustment to 8-man football for frosh and JV teams would assure preservation of the program’s athletes instead of experiencing the effects of the domino effect of being grossly outmatched, and consequently joining the growing ranks of the walking wounded.
TNT is covering some of or all the NBA playoff action each night during most of the nights this week, so I’m getting a huge dose of the Inside the NBA panel.
My favorite Charles Barkley comment this week was the way he described the Minnesota Timberwolves’ underperforming twin towers, seven-footers Karl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert.
“14-feet of useless” was how Chuck described the duo, and I laughed hard enough to wake up some people in my house.
A Steam Room podcast interview with Ben Affleck by Earnie Johnson and Barkley revealed a very funny line people who see the movie AIR (about Nike securing Michael Jordan for its basketball shoe line) will enjoy.
Barkley, in 1984, was among a few athletes coming aboard Nike for shoe deals, and one character in the scene looking at Barkley’s pictures exclaimed, “Nobody wants to see Charles Barkley on T.V.!”
Talk about a hot take? Barkley is arguably one of the most compelling sports commentators on television, and one of the top two athletes in terms of being the funniest athlete on TV.
Saturday August 19, I have Ohio travel plans. Massillon High School’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, with capacity of at least 16,000 seats these days with one side covered, old school, will host a handful of high school games showcasing some of the best high school football games in the geographic region.
Center Grove, winner of three straight IHSAA Class 6A football titles, will take on Lakewood Saint Edward, winner of back-to-back state titles in Ohio’s Division I, the state’s largest enrollment class among seven division. “St. Ed” as it’s known, is an all-boys school with an enrollment of at least 850 students.
The Eagles would be a small Class 4A school in Indiana, but they would likely play in Class 6A year-in and year-out due to the IHSAA tournament success factor. This year, the program has two Ohio state commits and one Michigan commit just from its offensive line.
I’m excited to see how far Indiana big school football has come thanks to the years Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts fueled greater interest in high school football. St. Ed will give Center Grove one heck of a challenge.
My interest in St. Ed came from traveling into Cleveland on Saturday afternoons to accompany my uncle/godfather to his alma mater’s games after I played on Friday nights for my high school. His oldest brother was a classmate of talk-show host Phil Donohue (you’ll have to be pretty old to remember Phil) in the school’s first graduating class in 1953.
My cousins played football and wrestled for the Eagles, too, one of them its valedictorian in 1978. The school sent nine athletes to the NFL, Tom Cousineau and Alex Boone among the most notable.
It’s a school I always wanted to attend, but I would have had to live in Cleveland or Lakewood with one of my two uncles, and the tuition was too expensive for my parents.
The 2023 NFL Draft will be another prime-time television success this Thursday. Ever since the draft was moved to prime time, I’ve never had a conflict with chores, or with accompanying my wife to some early/mid-day event. The absence of those conflicts afforded me uninterrupted viewing time.
I listened to another Indiana Football Coaches Association (IFCA) podcast, and Fort Wayne Snider head football coach Kurt Tippman was one of the guests. Dave Baumgartner and Ted Huber, the podcast hosts, asked Tippman to update the progress of 8-man football.
The contagion has not been at a high rate, but Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian and Irvington Prep are moving to 11-man football after their first respective seasons in the 8-man game.
In the meantime, four more schools moved into 8-man football in the Hoosier State netting a gain of two teams in the sport. The expanded field of six schools will take on schools in Illinois and in Ohio to round out a full season schedule.
Tippman noted an interesting twist favorably supporting the merits of 8-man football.
Smaller schools or schools with very small program numbers who are competitive in 8-man football but must cancel part or all of their JV and freshmen seasons due to low numbers are being encouraged to take on 8-man football at sub-varsity levels.
The sub-varsity move to the 8-man game can be tricky if not all the schools in your given athletic conference experience the same issue with numbers as you experience, so the idea is easier said than done, but it’s still practical.
There are schools in the Northern Lakes Conference who have in recent years had to integrate freshmen into their junior varsity squads. This does not work well when these schools face a JV squad from Warsaw or NorthWood – two schools disparate in size but strong in program numbers – who can dress 35-40 athletes hungry for action because they watched the entire varsity game from the sideline.
Bart Curtis has been quoted in so may words saying, “We must play all of those games…” when speaking of sub-varsity programs. It’s imperative to have these kids get meaningful reps at the appropriate levels before being thrown in the varsity football cauldron in a manner the Whitko Wildcats football squad experienced in the 2022 gridiron season.
I still strongly believe the preservation and resurrection of Whitko football comparable to its better days requires and adjustment to the 8-man game. It’s not surrender, it’s rehabilitation.
Freshmen should play at appropriate sub-varsity levels to boot, and the adjustment to 8-man football for frosh and JV teams would assure preservation of the program’s athletes instead of experiencing the effects of the domino effect of being grossly outmatched, and consequently joining the growing ranks of the walking wounded.
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