Guess which team provoked the coach – “Postgame ended with Terriers head coach Mike Young being boxed out by athletic director Richard Johnson to keep from crossing paths with a _______ staff member.” Even better? It all went down in front of the SoCon commish. You stay classy!
GaTech’s Paul Johnson lends the Stink an assistant – “Ga Southern announced Jeff Monken as its head football coach. Johnson-coached teams with Monken on staff have a 126-42 record and have been to 7 bowls, earned 5 playoff berths, won 2 FCS championships and 5 conference championships.”
We debated posting this. It’s not like we don’t have skeletons in our youtube closet. But, in the end, we couldn’t resist. The opening lines DEMAND an answer. Got one?
Sure, you were flattened by a Stone Curtain, and your so-called No. 1 defense shredded before the largest home crowd in your school’s history. And sure, you lost any chance at an outright league title in a game you were .. /wind blows, violins play .. d e s t i n e d .. /whisper … to win.
But check this out! Your consolation prize is a first-class ticket to Birmingham, Alabama!
A particularly pleasing piece of news came earlier in the week when Lembo announced that Elon’s plans for a marathon bus trip to Samford, located in Birmingham, Ala., had been scrapped in favor of a much more convenient charter flight.
By the bus route, Elon would have departed Samford after Saturday’s game and arrived back on campus around 4 or 5 a.m. Sunday.
But that fell by the wayside and now Elon’s players will be able to attend classes Friday morning before the team catches a flight of less than two hours out of Greensboro.
“That was big-time when we heard that,” White said. “Everybody was clapping, everybody was happy. It was definitely a great surprise. Nobody wants to ride on a bus eight or nine hours.”
We’re sure that’s news to SoCon headquarters. /shrugs
No matter how the Swag gets there, some hungry Dogs are waiting! And bonus! Since 2002, Elon is 1-6 in season finales. Their sole win? Mighty Stony Brook.
Even sweeter? Sometime yesterday the Swag’s swagger was so great, they actually went live – briefly – on their athletics website with a graphic they assumed inevitable. Nope. Thankfully, the MMB’s RankinApp improved upon it. Sweetest!
Five straight SoCon titles. Only been done once before in league history. Savor it.
Elon beat the ‘Whee easily, setting up for Saturday the second meeting evah! of two 6-0 SoCon teams since 1982. The Stink must have been bad, cause daddy spanked them, uh-gin! /giggle. Over in the CAA, the No. 1 ranked Spiders GO DOWN! And there was much cursing to be heard. Oh my!
The last time ‘Nooga coach Russ Huesman was in Boone, he wore different colors and left a winner. He also earned a new title – The Man Who Stole The Mojo.
It’s time to get it back.
Huesman was the defensive coordinator for the Richmond Spiders, who snatched five .. FIVE(!) .. AE passes along with any dreams of a four-peat during a cold, cold, day at The Rock.
“I knew we were going to win this game,” said Huesman, in his fifth season as Richmond’s defensive coordinator. “I just kind of had a good feeling about this one, and I think our kids did, too.”
A few weeks later, Huesman was standing in ‘Nooga a national champion. He loved the moment so much, he decided to stay. He took over his alma mater, and, well, he’s done a heck of a job.
The Mocs overcame a 20-9 second-half deficit to claim the fifth win of the season. UTC is now one win shy this season of equaling its win total from the previous three years combined.
That said, how confident are you coming to Boone this time, Bird Man?
All season the Stink has been promoting a True Blue website. It features “This week’s ‘Top 10′ Signs You’re True Blue!” Yet understandably, there hasn’t been a new Top 10 in more than a month. So we humbly submit our own.
The site gsueaglenation.com has posted a brief history of what it calls “college football’s most even rivalry.”
The teams have played 24 times. App State leads the series 12-11-1. Of the 18 games played since 1987, the series is an even 9-9.
gsueaglenation goes back to that 1987 game, and offers this amusing tidbit.
The first time Georgia Southern played ASU in the modern era, it was defending its back-to-back national titles in the quarterfinals of the 1987 playoffs.
Erk Russell brought his Eagles to Boone, N.C. on an icy, snowy bitter December day, and was shut out 19-0. It was the first time Erk’s Eagles had ever failed to score.
To add insult to injury, Appalachian fans spelled out, “Can you score?” in the snow behind the end zone.
They couldn’t.
For us, that “sign” ranks right up there with this one. /giggle
* Thanks to commenter GSU25+yrFan for posting the link
** Image stolen from this tremendous slideshow from App State-Stink ‘08
More astonishing comment? This – “What would have happened if GSU kept its offensive system – the triple option — in place with Armanti Edwards at quarterback?” Or this – AE would have been “a perfect backup to Jayson Foster at wide receiver.” Say whaaaaaa?
Yes, we Twitter (Tweet?). We’ve already passed along one twitter flash today. We can’t resist passing along three more. The App State volleyball team has almost reached it’s Dig Pink goal! Water safety king/WR CoCo Hillary is live on WASU tonight at 6. And we second this emotion.
One of the most common questions we get is why, oh why, do we affectionately refer to our rivals from Statesboro as the “Stink.”
You have to go back two years, back to the day … /DEEP SIGH .. that App State saw the nation’s longest home win streak end. Twas a great game. We said so at the time.
Being the naive App fans we are, we always assumed it was the defense, the playcalling, heck – the pure energy – of the Eagles that brought our House down. But later we learned twas no such thing.
According to the “Hatch Attack” himself, Georgia Southern beat App State thanks to nothing more than magical, stinky water.
He also talked about many of the big wins and how he got a coach to get some water from Eagle Creek before they went up to play Appalachian State.
“l checked with a priest about doing that and he said ‘Do whatever you need to do to win,’” Hatcher said. “We went out and won the game. We had some big wins. That was a great win.”
Quoting the great Erk Russell himself, “it is the most gnat-and mosquito-infested body of water per cubic centimeter in the world.”
Tell us that place doesn’t Stink!
So App fans be on the lookout! Beware any man or woman in blue carrying jugs of putrid puddles. If one drop again falls within our beloved Rock, we may just never get that smell out.
The Sporting News has come out with its annual list of America’s top sports cities. As is usually the case, Asheville is not ranked very high.
But get this: Cullowhee, home to Western Carolina University, is ranked 199, 26 spots ahead of Boone, where on fall Saturday afternoons crowds of 25,000 and more are commonplace for Appalachian State football games.
According to TSN (it’s still in business? really?), not all D1 sports are created equal. While the Catamounts get points for their basketball prowess and popularity(!), App State gets zip. zero. nada. for football.
Stupid extra A C.
Intrigued, we did some investigative work and .. Hark! We found massive evidence to support the ranking! Here’s TSN’s Top Ten reasons the ‘Whee is a better sports town than Boone.
No. 10 – Sparse football crowds mean a smaller carbon footprint and less damage to the environment.
No. 9 – The university has a history of economic development in the local retail industry.
Earlier this week, one of the sports writers for the campus paper went all snooty regarding what he felt was a lack of proper decorum in the El Cid pressbox.
Specifically, Rob Jenkins complained that Bulldog staffers were .. /gasps … audibly reacting in an overtly positive manner toward the home team’s fortuitous advances against their historically vastly superior opposition.
/faints from shock
This, opined Mr. Jenkins, was a disgrace, and against the proper code of conduct within the hallowed hall of a press box.
I want to take this opportunity to make a recommendation to The Citadel’s Director of Athletics Media Relations Noelle Orr Blaney.
In your letter welcoming the media members to the press area, you write, “There is absolutely no cheering of any kind tolerated in the press box.” You should probably put, “unless you work for The Citadel Media Relations” on the end of that sentence.
And, to add professional nobility to his honorable cause, Mr. Jenkins added, “The Citadel is the poor man’s West Point: it is the place where people who didn’t have the grades to get into Annapolis or West Point go.”
Oh my! What a stupid .. STUPID! … comment. Someone please send Mr. Jenkins a clue. Or two. Or another dozen.
One of the local sports writers in Charleston saw the insult and …. /gasps .. ignored it. Instead he responded to Jenkin’s central accusation.
Great. Kill a good nerd fight by being all professional and stuff.
It’s difficult to keep from reacting to great plays as they unfold on the field, for reporters and staff alike. I myself have done so, both for the “home” team and the opposition. This happens in press boxes everywhere — even, believe it or not, in Boone. And I have heard those who are a bit too boisterous, including cadets who work in the press box during games, be admonished.
He then offers a, we assume, random example of an unnamed school in which Mr. Jenkins rules were violently broken. Wonder who that could be? (Seriously, who?)
Western’s top RBs are all out with injuries. Uh-oh – “So now a Western squad that’s off to its worst start in 28 years will turn to true freshman tailback RaShawn Grate, who’d been working with the scout team.” And Saturday they play Lil Sammy. ‘Wheeeeeeeee!
Jenkerson thinks that although Appalachian State has been at or near the top of the Southern Conference and the division since he arrived in Statesboro in 2007 with Hatcher and his staff, it isn’t because the Mountaineers have worked harder.
“Right now you look at it and think they’re (App State) the top dog,” said Jenkerson. “We consider ourselves the top dog in this conference, because every time they come here, they’ve got to play to our level. When we go up there, they’ve got to play to our level.”