The final five have been revealed in the Down the Drive Ring of Honor voting. You have until the season opener against Austin Peay to vote.
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Training Camp
Training Camp 2011: Paul Dehner Interview - Can't get enough of Paul Dehner and his insights into Bearcats football. If you haven't, check out his blog here.
Training Camp 2011: Derek Wolfe Interview - Derek is surprisingly a quiet guy for being such a beast on the defensive line.
Training Camp 2011: Wide Receivers - Young and talented. We could see some big plays out of them but will have to deal with some growing pains.
Training Camp 2011: 1200 Club Visit - The money these guys generate is critical to the program.
Bearcats News
Butch Jones Q&A 8/24: Progress Made
Coach Butch Jones likes what he's seen out of his Bearcats as team broke camp at Higher Ground yesterday. I'm inclined to agree with him as I've seen from the camp videos that the team just looks bigger (thanks, Dave Lawson). That alone gets me excited about the 2011 season as a bigger team can dish out bigger hits and are more durable throughout the season. Gotta love that. Among the freshman, it sounds like huge 6'2" 320 lbs DT Brandon Mitchell out of Withrow high school has gained respect from every coach and veteran on the team. I hope he gets redshirted though to preserve his skills over the course of his career. On the negative side, Chris Moore was hit with a shoulder injury that will keep him our 4-6 weeks. Thankfully there haven't been many other injuries this camp.
BearcatReport.com - Search for Backup QB still unsettled
Munchie's starting to emerge as the #2 quarterback spot behind Zach Collaros. This isn't too surprising as he has one of the best arms among the backups and is a great runner. Jordan Luallen began camp splitting reps with Munchie when fall camp began of the sophomores, the latter has shown a lot more when camp at Higher Ground broke. One of the advantages Jordan had going for him was that he more experience playing college ball but he had trouble adjusting from the option offense he played since high school to the spread. Also, he had a quirky release on the ball which takes a while to be corrected. Munchie still has understandable problems with his completion rates but he has the most raw talent of all the backups.
With camp finished APSU turns attention to football season opener with Cincinnati | The Leaf Chronicle – Clarksville, Tenn., and Fort Campbell | theleafchronicle.com
Here's a thought: UC's going to obliterate the Governors 55+ to 7.
Around the BEast
Big East needs dose of scoring - Big East Blog - ESPN
It's truly amazing what a couple of new coaching hires does for a conference. In just one offseason, the Big East has seen a huge influx of spread offenses. West Virginia has been running a spread-option offense for a while but they will be opening up the passing game a lot more with Holgorsen's version of the air-raid. I think this is great for the Big East as teams will be better able to compete with the other conferences when the skill levels of the players are sometimes better elsewhere. Matt wrote a great piece about Cincinnati's competitiveness improving with the spread offense and if you extrapolate this to the rest of the Big East, it's a good thing for the conference.
Around the Nation
Bill Belichick wants the extra point to die - Shutdown Corner - NFL Blog - Yahoo! Sports
Bill Belichick is one of the greatest football minds of my generation and here's another gem out of him- If the NFL is going to have teams kick off from 5 yards up to encourage touchbacks, they should just place the ball on 20 yard line and start the drive from there. It would definitely speed up the game and basically end the the NFL's tease with keeping/removing kick returns all together. However, I'm not sure the NFLPA would approve of this as eliminating this aspect of special teams could potentially make 3rd and 4th string players obsolete, thus garnering smaller NFL rosters.