portal. (For those familiar with the school’s nickname, this was a different sort of Thundering Herd.)
Could the Radiance Techologies people, whoever they are, have come up with enough NIL money to convince those players to stay just one more game? We’ll never know. Instead, Louisiana Tech — a 5-7 team during the regular season, but conveniently located an hour’s drive from the game site in Shreveport — took Marshall’s place. …
• This reminds us of the 2021 Holiday Bowl at Petco Park. UCLA was scheduled to play North Carolina State, but a little more than five hours before kickoff the Bruins had to bow out because a COVID-19 outbreak depleted their defensive line.
• As it turned out, four other bowl games that year were canceled and two others had to replace teams that pulled out, in the days of the Omicron variant. That was unforeseen, although by then we were deep enough into the pandemic that it shouldn’t have been a total surprise. (And the portal, first instituted in 2018, was just beginning to turn college football into a form of mass free agency.)
The date that the portal opens now practically invites bowl opt-outs, so this should be not at all surprising. Indeed, it’s another example of how the leadership void at the top of college sports has turned the whole enterprise, and especially football, into one big squirrel derby. …
• That description, incidentally, came from a football guy: Gene Murphy, the late Cal State Fullerton (and later Fullerton JC) coach who had, shall we say, a distinctive way with the language. The definition of squirrel derby: Utter chaos. …
• Can we blame Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette for this trend? Both skipped bowl games at the end of 2016 to prepare for the NFL draft (and to avoid the risk of an injury that could send them spiraling on draft lists). Stanford’s McCaffrey skipped the Sun Bowl and LSU’s Fournette the Citrus Bowl. It was an outlier then but wouldn’t be for long. …
• So what happens the first time a player on one of the playoff teams decides to opt out? The suspicion here: He certainly wouldn’t be helping his draft status. …
• Along those same lines, would anyone else in the NFL dare take a chance on soon to be former 49ers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell now? As you might expect, after Campbell declined to play in the second half last week against the Rams, and then walked to the locker room during the fourth quarter, the club suspended him for the rest of the regular season and cleared out his locker.
Whatever the player’s reasons, if you’re a coach or a personnel guy would you even think of signing someone who walked out on his previous team in such an egregious fashion? Opting out is one thing. Flat-out quitting is another. …
• We are now approaching the third anniversary of the schoolyard 3-pointer seen around the world, the half-court (or so) shot that third-grade teacher and former college player Kathleen Fitzpatrick (aka Ms. Fitz) sank, earning her entire class at Holy Trininty School in Georgetown hot chocolate.
That clip never gets old. …
• What seems less relevant, NBA fans? The NBA Cup final, or the league’s attempt to reinvent an All-Star Game that has become increasingly unwatchable? …
• Reminder: From the moment the banner celebrating the “in-season tournament” championship went up on the wall at the Arena Formerly Known As Staples Center a year ago, the Lakers lost 11 of their next 15. So when the Milwaukee Bucks talk about using this year’s mini-title as an impetus toward a real one in June, take it for what it’s worth (i.e., not much). …
• If they need a reminder, Darvin Ham — Lakers head coach then, Bucks assistant now — can provide it.
Ham’s Lakers had the same record through 27 games last season, 15-12, that JJ Redick’s team has at the same point this year. Last year’s team finished 47-35 with a roster full of play-in level players beyond LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and there’s not that much difference in talent level this year.
In an interview with Andscape, Ham noted, “Anywhere else I’m probably looking at an extension with what I did.” He’s not wrong, and that’s the savage part of Laker Exceptionalism. …
• Their best plan right now? Try to work a couple more of those weeks off for LeBron into the middle of the schedule. The most recent one seemed to have the desired effect. The goal has to be to make sure he’s at his best by playoff time, and if that means running afoul of the league’s load management standards, so be it.
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