A tough league to predict
By Jerry Ratcliffe
Published: July 29, 2009
GREENSBORO, N.C.

Scattershooting around the ACC, while betting that us media types didn’t correctly pick the conference championship football matchup during this week’s ACC kickoff at Grandover Resort…

Since the inception of the league’s divisional play in 2005, guess how many times in four previous attempts we’ve gotten that matchup correct.

Once. That was the first year, ’05, when we picked Florida State to beat Virginia Tech in the championship game.

In 2006, the preseason pick was Miami over FSU in the title game, but Wake Forest defeated Georgia Tech. In 2007, the pick was Virginia Tech over FSU, and we were halfway right, as the Hokies defeated Boston College in the title tilt. Last year, the pick was Clemson over Virginia Tech, and of course, the Tigers folded early after they were overwhelmed in the season opener against Alabama. Tech ended up beating BC again for the championship.

This year, by the way, media attending the ACC kickoff picked Virginia Tech to defeat Florida State in the championship. Odds are one of these teams won’t make it that far.

Tough to start

Virginia coach Al Groh told writers at the kickoff on Monday that two of the Cavaliers’ early season nonconference games are particularly tough.

While he wasn’t overlooking William & Mary (he wasn’t asked about the Tribe), Groh spoke about how difficult games against Texas Christian (here on the second week of the season) and Southern Mississippi (in Hattiesburg the third week of the season) could be.

“[TCU] would be one of the favorites if they were in this conference,” Groh said of the Horned Frogs.

After all, TCU finished seventh in the nation last season, boasted the country’s No. 1 defense and the No. 24 offense.

“They won’t bring a lot of hype with them to the East Coast, but I’m impressed with that team,” Groh said.

Then there’s Southern Miss.

“They’ve been very successful down there,” Groh said. “Their program has won 19 bowl games. How many teams in this conference has won that many?”

The answer is three: Georgia Tech, Florida State and Miami.

Beamer psyched

Chatting with Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer at the kickoff, the veteran coach is fired up about the Hokies’ season opener against Alabama in the Georgia Dome.

“It’s an exciting start,” Beamer said. “I firmly believe that if you win a game like that it gives you great momentum, and if you lose that early in the season, you still have a chance to bounce back.”

Beamer said he was excited about this particular team, which has been picked to win the ACC and will be ranked high when the national polls come out next month.

“I think [the team] is legit,” Beamer said. “We’ve got some good football players. One of the things out there (that he wonders about) is that we may still be too young.”

He was referring to a young team, even though it’s fairly experienced, competing for a national title chase.

A leaner Fridge

Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen has often poked fun of himself about his weight problem, but showed up in Greensboro a much leaner football coach.

Friedgen, adoringly referred to by many as “the Fridge,” lost some weight a couple of years ago, showing up at Sawgrass Resort in Jacksonville, Fla., for the ACC kickoff after one noticeable weight-loss program.

Told he looked great after dropping around 50 pounds, he joked, “Yeah, it’s like throwing three deck chairs off the Titanic.”

This time it was different.

Friedgen showed up in Greensboro weighing 306 pounds, which means he lost 95 pounds. When he tipped the scales at 401 pounds eight months ago, he decided to do something and discovered the Medifast diet plan, from a company based in Owings Mills, Md.

He eats five small meals a day, which has boosted his metabolism.

At age 62, the coach is hoping to lose 55 more pounds to help secure a healthier life. But he admits it’s getting tougher now.

“I used to eat all of my meals fast, but they tell you to eat slow,” Friedgen said. “Well, when you’re really eating only one [substantial] meal a day, man, you eat it as slow as you can.”

Short yardage

The ACC kickoff drew a record number of media (255) even though most newspapers and other outlets are experiencing tough times with travel expenses. Part of the reason it was so successful may have been the league’s decision to move the event to Greensboro, home of ACC headquarters, as opposed to sticking with the original site for this year’s event, Tampa, Fla., where the league will hold its championship game in December. ... The Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, has announced the pairing for its third game in 2010 — LSU vs. North Carolina in the Georgia Dome. The first two matchups between teams from the ACC and SEC have been sellouts, including this year’s Virginia Tech vs. Alabama, and last year’s Alabama vs. Clemson games.
 

Long Days for Strength-and-Conditioning Staff
Courtesy: VirginiaSports.com
Release: 07/29/2009
By Jeff White
jeffwhite@virginia.edu

CHARLOTTESVILLE – The lazy days of summer are anything but for Brandon Hourigan. UVa’s director of football training and player development tries to be in bed by 9 o’clock and asleep by 10 on weeknights.

“My wife thinks I’m 90 years old,” Hourigan, 37, said with a wry smile Tuesday evening.

The Massachusetts native’s desire for rest is understandable. During the week, Hourigan has 5 a.m. meetings with his staff at the McCue Center. An hour later, the first wave of players shows up for weighlifting.

More will arrive at 8 and at 10 a.m., and then in the early and late afternoon. Hourigan’s workday usually ends after 6 p.m., at which time he trudges home, where his wife, Amy, and their children, Brandon Jr. and Ava., await his return.

“This is a grinder,” Hourigan said, “but I’m used to it.”

He and his assistants have a straightforward assignment: Get Al Groh’s players, here for summer school, ready for the physical rigors of training camp, which begins Aug. 7. The players’ organized summer workouts end Thursday morning with a conditioning test.

With the veterans, the challenge has not been as great for Hourigan. The returning Cavaliers have all been in the program for at least a year. They know Hourigan, and they know what’s expected of them.

With the incoming recruits, who train together in a separate group, the challenge has been greater. It has taken them some time, Hourigan said, to understand the level of conditioning required in college football.

There are some exceptions, he added, pointing to Perry Jones, Tim Smith, Javanti Sparrow and Quintin Hunter, who were still out on the field, tossing a football around. Overall, though, the first-year class' conditioning lagged well behind that of the veterans.

His goals for the freshmen, then, had to be less ambitious. Hourigan said he tried to teach the newcomers how “to run correctly, how to work and how to get themselves in condition. We only have four weeks with them, and the most important thing for them is to be in shape for camp. Can they survive a camp?”

Ideally, of course, they’ll do more than just survive. “I want these guys to be able to persevere through it and keep going and keep challenging some of these older dudes,” Hourigan said.

He’d like to see all of the freshmen in “attack mode,” as he put it, but Hourigan is realistic. “That’s hard to really get at when they come in and they have no idea,” he said. “They’re huffing and puffing, and this is just the warm-up. I tell 'em, ‘I got news for you, fellas. This is just the warm-up. We haven’t even gotten into the bread and butter yet. This is just an appetizer.’"

Still, Hourigan pronounced himself pleased with the team's progress this summer and the way the players have bonded. He’s varied their workouts. They've run up Observatory Hill. They've trained in a sand pit, doing ability drills, running suicides and having tug-of-war contests.

“That thing’s brutal,” Hourigan said of the pit. “It’s just a bear with the sand. You can displace energy, but it’s not going anywhere.”

Hourigan, who still speaks with a distinct New England accent, came to U.Va. in January from the University of Richmond. He spent four seasons as head strength-and-conditioning coach for the Spiders’ football team, which won the FCS national title in 2008.

At UVa, Hourigan replaced Matt Balis, who left in December for Mississippi State. Their philosophies differ.

“His is more high-intensity reps,” Hourigan said, “how many reps you can get in a certain thing. Mine is more working on more or less the power aspect of it, explosive power from the Olympic lifts. We Olympic-lift. We do cleans from the floor. [Under Balis, the players] were doing hang cleans, where they go mid thighs. We’re actually going from the floor, generating power from the floor.

“I think also, too, the flexibility stuff wasn’t [a priority]. Guys were stiff, bound up. Big, muscular, but not fluid. And I tried to really work on making sure that every day, at least 10 minutes out of the day, we always stretched.”

Hourigan teaches static stretching, in which stretches are usually held for at least 30 seconds.

“We did a lot of static-stretching in the beginning,” Hourigan said. “We still do. I put it in my workouts all the time, and they didn’t really do that before. It’s a huge factor … The pressure and tension that’s built up, you’ve got to release that stuff.”

Hourigan and his staff work with the players year-round, but once training camp starts, Groh and his assistants have the most influence. NCAA rules limit how much hands-on work coaches can do with players out of season, however, so Hourigan’s role is magnified in the summer.

“They see me every day excluding Saturdays and Sundays,” he said. “We’re around them 24/7.”



 

Dowling earns preseason honor
By The Daily Progress Staff
Published: July 30, 2009

In Greensboro, N.C., reigning player of the year Jonathan Dwyer and rookie of the year Russell Wilson headline the all-ACC preseason team.

Junior cornerback Ras-I Dowling was the only Virginia player selected to the team.

The ACC on Wednesday announced the 24 selections as determined by a vote of 44 media members who attended the league’s media days earlier in the week.

Dwyer had a league-best 41 votes. The Georgia Tech running back is attempting to become the ACC’s first two-time player of the year since 1992-93. Last season, Wilson — a Richmond native who plays for N.C. State — was the first freshman named quarterback of the all-ACC team.

Preseason favorite Virginia Tech placed four players on the team. Three teams — North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Clemson — had three selections. Two of the Tigers’ picks went to C.J. Spiller, honored as a running back and kick returner.

Cavaliers pick up 1st recruit for 2011 class

Sitting where he expected in terms of the recruiting efforts for the class of 2010, Virginia coach Al Groh hinted at the ACC football kickoff that early work had been done in regards to following season.

Groh went as far as to say that several commitments were in place, without offering names to avoid the fallout from the NCAA.

One name came to light on Wednesday as it was confirmed that wideout Adrian Gamble, a speedster from Independence High in Charlotte, N.C., had verbally committed to Virginia.

The 6-foot-2, 178-pound Gamble was offered a scholarship after attending a camp this summer at Virginia.

Gamble has not played at the varsity level to date, but is expected to start this season for Independence, a school that produced former North Carolina standout Hakeem Nicks.

Virginia currently has nine verbal commitments for the Class of 2010, but that number could be considered larger based on the fact that offensive lineman Morgan Moses is expected to attend Fork Union.
 

College notebook: Friedgen has lost almost 100 pounds
By Doug Doughty | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer, who worked on coaching staffs with Ralph Friedgen at three colleges, said he has photos of Friedgen when Friedgen weighed 240 pounds.

"He was a stylish figure," Beamer said Monday at the ACC Football Kickoff.

Whether that was a widely held view has not been determined, but Friedgen obviously looked better in the 1970s than he did when he tipped the scales at 401 pounds last fall.

Nine months later, Friedgen wasn't the most "stylish" guy in the room Monday, but he now weighs 306 pounds and isn't done dropping weight.

Friedgen doesn't know if he had ever weighed 400 pounds prior to the fall of 2008, "but I never weighed myself a whole lot," he said. "But it's funny. When I got on this diet, it was like keeping score. I was weighing, like, every day."

Friedgen had been on a variety of diets before meeting a Maryland fan associated with Medifast, which features one main meal and numerous smaller meals each day.

"He told me if I would commit to do this, I would lose weight," Friedgen, 62, said. "The first week, I lost 16 pounds. The first 50 was easy. It got tougher and tougher after that. I've got 100 in sight and I'd like to lose 150, but I don't know if I can do that.

"I was born 150 pounds."

Once word got out about Friedgen's weight loss, he got a call from Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid. Friedgen recommended Medifast to Reid, and Reid lost 75 pounds.

"He told the Medifast people that he wants he and I to do a swimsuit calendar," Friedgen said. "I said, 'Oh, I bet they'll be lined up to buy that one.' "

One remarkable aspect of Friedgen's weight loss is that it started during the 2008 season, when the stress might have caused a lot of coaches to eat as a release.

"In Boise, [Darius] Heyward-Bey's mom came up to me," said Friedgen, referring to the Terps' Humanitarian Bowl game with Nevada. "At that point, I'd probably lost 60 [pounds] and she said, 'You know, Coach, that blue field makes you look skinny. We've got to get one of them at Maryland.' "

Fresh starts

Two former ACC quarterbacks hoping to produce some fifth-year magic are ex-North Carolina QB Cam Sexton and Wake Forest's Brett Hodges, who was mostly a backup in his four seasons at Wake Forest.

Sexton started six games last year in place of injured starter T.J. Yates and would have provided security this year, coach Butch Davis said. However, Davis could not offer the playing time that Sexton could see at North Alabama, a Division II program now headed by Terry Bowden, who has been out of coaching since his in-season resignation at Auburn in 1998.

Hodges, part of the same 2005 Wake recruiting class that produced celebrated quarterback Riley Skinner, will have instant eligibility at Division I-A Central Florida because he has graduated from Wake and is enrolled in a graduate program (forensic computer science) not available at Wake. Sixty-six of Hodges' 70 career attempts were during the 2007 season.

Recruiting

Virginia has received a football commitment from a rising junior, 6-foot-2, 175-pound Adrian Gamble from Independence High School in Charlotte, N.C.

Gamble, who attended a recent one-day camp at UVa, is a track standout who has a 33-inch vertical leap and has been timed in 4.43 seconds for 40 yards.

Moses movement

Virginia coach Al Groh told reporters that prize 2009 signee Morgan Moses will spend the fall semester at Fork Union Military Academy.

Technically, Moses will be recruitable once school starts, but Groh indicated that all signs suggest the commitment to UVa is solid.

Fork Union coach John Shuman said that Moses and his parents were at Fork Union on Saturday and were presented an application at that time. Shuman said he would like to have the paperwork in hand before adding Moses to the FUMA roster, but practice doesn't start till Aug. 17.

Shuman was concerned when he heard of an online post that indicated Moses had decided to go to Hargrave Military Academy, but Hargrave coach Robert Prunty, who was vacationing in Charleston, S.C., quickly scotched that rumor.

"I don't know who would have posted that because I haven't heard anything about it," Prunty said. "I haven't talked to [Moses]. I would be shocked. I'd be extremely happy if it happened, but I don't think it's going to happen. Somebody would have mentioned it to me."

Hopes doused

Former Cave Spring pitcher Kevin Munson of James Madison, named to the Cape Cod League all-star team, was warming up in the bullpen at Fenway Park and was slated to start the sixth inning before the game was called on account of lightning and rain last week.