But for real dawg - consider this:
1. The VanZile Plan. Mike Van Zile of Walkill Valley gets the BRASS BALLS award for the 07 season.
Yeah, I know, he's whining right? No WAY!! He is merely the one who has the courage to bring to the table the issues that have been f-ing up NJ football for many years. The NJSIAA rulebook says that "schools may not recruit for athletic advantage" (or something like that - YOU can look it up, ok?). Well, guess what - that is the source of all the real problems with HS sports in this state, especially basketball, Football, and Baseball. (Nobody f-ing gives a shizzle in America about "soccer", so get it through your thick pansy skulls ok? - but more on that later.) Private schools can give "scholarships" to anyone they wish, from anywhere in the state with impunity, and it has been happening for years.
The NJSIAA has neither the will nor the means to enforce this on the privates, and they never will. (as an aside, if I was the parent of a kid in Paterson, and I had the opportunity to send my kid to Delbarton on a ride vs. Eastside High - the decision is no brainer - I don't blame the kids or the parents - nor the schools for providing the opportunity). But the problem is real when i comes to athletic advantage...the publics just can't compete with the privates, especially when it comes to playoffs. Simultaneously, publics are scrutinized annually for possible recruiting violations. It is simply unfair.
Goats: NJSIAA (for having their thumbs up their asses)
Villains: Every AD who voted against the VanZile Plan.
Heroes: Mike Van Zile. Those who voted with him.
Victims: The athletes. All of them.
Aftermath. It looks like the NJSIAA finally got off their Herodic asses and put together a team to study how to work out a compromising plan addressing many of the issues. If you ask me, Steve Timko (the "Pete Roselle" of the NJSIAA) just doesn't want to get a pink slip, but at least he recognized that there is problem here, which is more than can be said about his predecessor (whoever the hell that chump was).
2. Why are the NJ state football trophies so lame (in design)? Hey, Robbinsville...WAKE UP. It is 2007. Time to redesign that lame ass trophy that you cheap bastards issue! Gimme a break. You want inspiration? Take a look at the Lombardi trophy. These kids broke their asses for god knows how long and all you can do is issue that lame piece of wood? Football is the premier, distinct, unique, American sport. Act like it and step up. 'Nuff said.
3. Steroids testing. This is where the NJSIAA demonstrates it's biggest amount of authority and where they could have the biggest impact at leveling the playing field. Imagine how the playing field would change if no one used 'roids? Inerestingly enough, this dovetails with the recruiting problem, and is exacerbated by it.
How? Consider this: you live in smalltown A and the genetically best athletes you had ended up going to Seton Hall, and then you still have to play them and expect to be competitive, what are you going to do? If you live in Smalltown B, and you play innner-city schools who have a much larger genetic pool to choose from, what is your alternative to be competitive? Both cases can lead to using.
The current NJSIAA policy only tests a random 2 players from each team in each Championship game. Really. Is that a deterrent? F-NO. If you are a user, you have less than a 5% chance of getting caught - IF YOU ARE ON A FINALS TEAM. That number falls DRASTICALLY (about nil) if you don't make it to the finals because it is basically left to the coaches. The vast majority coaches don't want to know or can't ask if their players are users, because it would cease competitive advantage or is otherwise procedurally or legally limited to ask. On a personal note, I played with at least one kid who was an obvious user - everyone knew it - the coaches looked the other way; he was, of course, a standout. How would he have been had not used? Probably average.
So how do we fix this? By issuing a policy that is ACTUALLY A THREAT TO THE USERS!
Example 1: Test a random sample of 1-2 players, from 20% of teams each week during the regular season and larger samples in the entire postseason.
Example 2: Test all players on all teams in the finals.
Example 3: Test 1 random player from every team prior to every regular season game and all players in all finals.
The bottom line is this. There is still roids use among many HS athletes, especially football players. In order to discourage it propoerly, we need a policy that actually has teeth to stop it. If you are serious about stopping it, then you need to get serious with your policies. The current policy is as useless as the paper (or electrons) it is printed on. It stops no one.
4. Religion and Football.
a. Amazing Grace. Supposedly, according to the mighty Joe Hof, the Mount Olive band played Amazing Grace during one of its home games early this year. Good for them.
b. Team Prayers. Apparently their are some atheistic a-holes out there who make it their mission in life to remove any reference to religion from public life including that of any public high school football coach making any reference to God or prayer during, before, or after a game. My message to you - get a life, and put down the doobie. Remember, it is precisely our Judeo-Christian moral heritage/traditions in this country that instruct us to be tolerant of other religions (or no-religions). Remove that and the tolerance baseline goes bye-bye too.
c. F-The ACLU. American Communist Lawyers Union.
5. The Sissification of America. Here's something I have been preaching for many years. The kind of kids that play football are the kind of kids who would have been the warriors 10-6000+ years ago. You want to sissify this country? You want to let other people conquer us? Start watering down our contact sports, start playing more soccer, take the hitting out of lacrosse, outlaw boxing...and so on. We'll end up with Lesbian-Amazons in charge and we'll be slain by third world a-holes like UBL and AlQaeda.
American Football is one of the last bastions of true masculinity being allowed on a mass level. Football helps our boys become men and has many rewarding life-lessons that cannot be understood well enough unless you have played it. Start messing with the rules on contact and keep participation levels down at the low levels and in the words of Jesse Ventura in PREDATOR, we'll end up with a bunch of "slack-jawed, fagg!t$ 'round here".
6. Racism, Football, and Recruiting. The Mighty JoeHof had an excellent, Pulitzer Caliber, article in the Daily Record, about midseason, speaking to the systemic racism against white men in college football recruiting. Nice job Joe...you are the brass-balls award runner up, for having the courage to speak truth to power, and stand up to the Race-baiters, etc. If you haven't read it, you need to. The brief synopsis is that standout white players have a much harder time getting scholarships to play football, especially at the skill-positions. One things though Joe: You mentioned Martinek in that article...he is poor example of one of these cases as he is not the talent that you wrote him up to be in High School (IMHO). Yeah, he broke* the NJ state rushing record, but he is certainly not anywhere near the level of Craig Heyward (Passaic '83?), Willie Wilson (Summit '73?), etc. If Hayek and others had been starting at RB since they were Frosh as well, where would they stand in total yards? Schiano had good reason to switch him to DB.
7. Iron Hills Divide. There should be a Iron Hills championship game to decide an Iron Hills Champion. The Iron division Champ should play the Hills division champ annually, this would solve any questions about which team the best in MoCo annually (yeah, I know there are other conferences in the county, but who cares? - just kidding).
8. The Star-Ledger. For the love of Peter, DOES THE STAR LEDGER WEBSITE BLOW OR WHAT??? They took a bad site and made it worse. It is the most frustrating site I have ever had to navigate.
9. Thanksgiving Day Games. Bring em back. Especially where you can keep or revive rivalries by doing so, like an annual Mendham-WMC game.
10. West Morris Central. What in the name of Mike is going on at WMC?? Has that program imploded or what? 3 losing seasons in 4 years or something? They should be much better next year, but I feel bad for those kids.
11. (Omitted/Classified)
12. Par Hills. Congrats to their coach for turning that program around, but you need to work on your sportsmanship...remember you set the example...and that is why you are known as the dirtiest team in the Hills.
13. Mendham. You had a great year. You got robbed of a playoff berth. You should have killed Ridge in that consolation game. Next year is probably your best shot at a state-run in 10 years...take advantage...you have the talent...spend your off-season in the Gym and work hard...it is yours for the taking but you have got TO WANT IT BAD ENOUGH TO GET IT. I have hunch you have a few dry years coming up after the '08 season...just a hunch.
14. West Essex. 1) Great Season, and congrats on both titles. 2) You need to find other teams to beat up on than the Hills (see recommendation of an IHC title game above.). 3) Stop paying off the Refs. It's old, and you don't need to do it. ;)
15. Randolph. Lusardi. Suk. Dunn. Good lord. I don't know what the truth is over there, but it sure as hell smells like something stinks over there. If there is corruption, it needs to be addressed. ...And NO SUK is clearly not DI talent...at least not based on his performance this year. (of course neither was Mendham's QB in '06, but he is amazingly playing D-III college ball. Go figure.)
16. HP's Jerkoff annonuncer. This guy is an embarassment to every legitimate announcer out there. Get a life you f-ing loser. A good game announcer's affiliation should be transparent...announce the yardage gain...who carried the ball...who made the tackle...etc. that's it. None of this "another HP [pause] first DOWN!!" crap. A-hole.
17. Joe Hofmann and the Daily Record. Joe, you and the Daily Record, for the most part did a fine job this season. I give you a B+/A-. You get the A- if you want to argue your grade and you can get Megan Fox to show me her breasts...OK, I'll settle for a hooters girl shoeing me her cleavage if I can do the "motorboat".
18. "Mr. Dunn". If that actually was you all year on JH's blog, you need to get a life. I actually sympatized with you early on, but your unintelligible, ridiculous, cruel rantings have jeopardized your credibility. Leave the kids alone. Stop drinking. Shut up.
You are the recipient of the Trojan-ENZ, boner of the Season award. Congrats.
16 comments:
Suk is still young. Give him a chance.
I agree. That is why I said THIS year. He can make up for it for sure, and seriously, I wish him the best of luck too. I hope he does well, and maybe gets a ride.
Nice summary Val. I am giving you a lot of props. I sort of agree about the private public thing. But I always love it that a public team that lost a kid to the privates gets a chance to get their revenge. But the system does need reworking.
I think Martinek could be a RB with a few extra lbs.
Thanksgiving Day games should come back.
And you are right, what happeend to WMC? They were always a scary team. Now they are as powder puffy as their powder blue colors.
Yeah, and WMC need to change their name back to Highlanders...that is an awesome name...don't know why the lax and FB teams go by Wolfpack and the rest go by H-landers. retarded.
plus, bagpipes can rattle the shit out of opponents before games. they should play it.
Which Mendham quarterback are you talking about?
The one who started in fall of '06 as a senior (name escapes me). I am not referring to the current starter, C.S., who is actually a decent talent, and much better than the '06 season's qb.
Val, any chance we'll be seeing a full out preview with predictions for next year to wrap up the season, or will we have to wait all the way until next fall?
That's a lot of work...I am betting that Rules might be able to be talked into it...I'll help. But believe me, I can understand - the 'Record and Ledger won't publish theirs until the week before the first game...we'll see.
That would be awesome.
Jesus! It is winter now.
Hey, I will give you snippits of football in about every post I make. But I dont think we will be doing any kind of post season preview of next year or whatever you are looking for.
I love football but we need to take a break to appreciate it for next year.
Anonymous, email me if there is something I should know about or if there is something that should be written about.
Unfortunately in all the hype and subsequent criticism of Mike Suk at Randolph this year, many excellent players and Randolph residents were not given the kudos they deserved for this season. Danny Thompsen, Brian Leone,Ryan Sappio, Mike McKean, Andrew Turner all had outstanding seasons for the Rams but all of that was lost on the JoeHoff/"Mr. Dunn" debacle. If you are truly going to objectively report on the IHC you must get past all the $hit and give the players who made a difference the recognition they deserve. There will always be jerkoff parents out there trying to spoil it for the kids who really played hard, even in a losing season.
Can someone send me a link or tell me about this Dunn thing, i have no idea whats going on.
total loser is an understatement.
Joe's blog: http://www.dailyrecord.com/blogs/jhofmann/jhofmann.html
Is there any site that shows the all conference players this year?
Not that I am aware of - but I would expect to see them in DR or SL anytime very soon (this week or next).
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