Lowa football embraces the graduate transfer craze

This may make me a rare bird (or a birdbrain) in these parts, but I prefer pro sports over the college variety.

Don't get me wrong. I watch more college football than NFL on television. It's a wackier game, and more emotional. Plus, it's played in weirder locations than the pro variety. You'd never have heard of Tuscaloosa, Clemson or Norman were it not for their football powerhouses.

And, it's on at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, when I'm unwinding after covering a game at 11 a.m. on a Saturday.

Basketball-wise, if it's a regular-season game I usually have little interest in either the NBA or NCAA versions unless it's meaningful to doing my job. If it's an NBA playoff game or an NCAA tournament game, though, gimmee.

No, I like pro sports more because they don't pretend to be something noble. They're entertainment. They're raw commerce.

The players are the stars, not the coaches. Which means the players have certain amounts of leverage. Which is how the world should work. The people who draw the crowds get paid.

So I like the graduate-transfer rule in college sports. If you have earned a degree and still have athletic eligibility left, you can transfer somewhere if you continue your education there.

It's a watered-down version of free agency. Were I emperor of the world, all players could immediately play elsewhere the following season if they so chose. It would be chaos, and the players would be kings.

But that will never happen because the power is the power, and the power never has any intention of ceding the power. So, let's savor grad transfers. Iowa has certainly begun to do just that.

The Hawkeyes have dipped into the graduate-transfer pool again, with the addition of former New Mexico wide receiver Nick Quarells.

This is a relatively new avenue for Kirk Ferentz's program, but one it seems to now be embracing. Last year, the Hawkeyes welcomed punter Ron Coluzzi from Central Michigan, and he worked out beautifully for them.

Recently, Iowa added running back James Butler. Nice get. Butler is coming off two straight 1,300-yard rushing seasons at Nevada.

Quarells is a graduate with two seasons of eligibility left. That's a sweet deal for an Iowa program that desperately needs ball-catchers.

Quarells had 11 catches for 180 yards and a touchdown last season for the Lobos. That's more career catches in itself than any wide receiver on Iowa's roster other than Matt VandeBerg.

Graduate transfers have been a significant part of the college basketball landscape for the last few years. Iowa State has added Hans Brase of Princeton, Jeff Beverly of Texas-San Antonio and Zoran Talley of Old Dominion this year alone.

Grad transfers have become more of a thing in college football lately, it seems.

Purdue has gained a half-dozen grad transfers since Jeff Brohm became coach after last season. They have arrived from Baylor, Notre Dame, Wake Forest, Rhode Island, Northern Illinois and Western Kentucky.

Northwestern added offensive lineman Trey Klock from Georgia Tech and receiver Jalen Brown from Oregon.

Rutgers secured quarterback Kyle Bolin from Louisville, fullback Gus Edwards from Miami, and receiver Damon Mitchell from Arkansas.

Graduate transfer Chris Laviano left Rutgers for to play quarterback at San Diego State. That tells the world he not only is a college graduate, but he has common sense.

Memphis football is back – and it's a blast

Riley Ferguson has figured it out. He has figured out what it feels like to walk on to the football field and see Anthony Miller out there, ready to catch anything, and to see Phil Mayhue lined up on the other side, poised to make a defense pay for doubling Miller. To have Doroland Dorceus lined up behind him, or maybe Darrell Henderson, or possibly Tony Pollard. To have Sam Craft on his offensive team, as well as Damonte Coxie and Patrick Taylor.

"It's unbelievable, honestly," Ferguson said. "I'm like a little kid in the backyard with the best players in the neighborhood."

The best players in the neighborhood. And a coach who can draw up plays in the dirt as well as anyone.

So welcome to Memphis football, 2017. It's going to be good, yes. But it's also going to be something many people never thought Memphis football could be.

Fun. A blast. A wildly-entertaining civic happening.

Memphis football has become what Memphis basketball once was, what Grizzlies basketball has been for the last seven years.

"It's the best thing I've ever done in my life," Ferguson said. "I love it, being the quarterback at Memphis."

This is how everyone talks about the program these days, even if they're not the quarterback. The fans talk this way. The players talk this way.

Here's Spencer Smith, the punter: "It's fun every day, even if we're in there, and they're kicking our butts on the field or in the weight room. It's just fun to be here and be around this group of guys and around this coaching staff. It's fun every day regardless of what we're doing."

Much of the fun comes from winning games, of course. That's a prerequisite. But at least some of it comes from the way the Tigers win them.

They fling the ball all over the place. They set records upon records.

Last year, with a brand new coach and a brand new quarterback, Memphis racked up 6,028 yards (second all-time), 505 points (second all-time), 57 touchdowns (second all-time) and 34 touchdown passes (first all-time).

And, yes, the game of football is very different than it used to be. But it wasn't so long ago (2013, 2011 and 2010, to be exact) that the Tigers averaged 19.5, 16.2 and 14.4 points a game. Last year, they averaged 38.8 points a game, and this year could be even better.

"Definitely," Dorceus said. "We left a lot of plays, we left a lot of yards, touchdowns, off little mistakes that we made, not that the other team made, that we made. If we fix that, that's another 1,000 yards for us that we left out there."

Said Pollard: "If I played defense, I would be scared going against us because on offense, we have an unlimited number of players that we can go to and rely on in game-time situations."

Pollard is a perfect example of this. Along with Henderson, he may be the fastest player on the team. He showed that last year when he scored two touchdowns on kickoffs. But at receiver, he shares time with Miller (who had 95 catches for 1,434 yards and 14 touchdowns last year) and Mayhue (a 6-3 monster who catches everything) and Craft (who has already scored 17 touchdowns over the course of his career) and Coxie (who may have the best physical tools of any of them).

At running back, Pollard has to fit in with Dorceus (who has 1,881 career rushing yards) Henderson (who is simply electric) and Taylor (a 6-3 battering ram who was second in rushing as a freshman).

So you understand why Ferguson is so pumped, and why fans are pumped right along with him.

"There's literally nothing a defense can do to be right if the quarterback makes the right decision," Ferguson said. "The defense can never be right. There's always an answer no matter what the defense does. Literally, there's nothing the defense can do as long as we're on the same page and make the right decisions."

So here's to being on the same page in 2017. And here's to making the right decisions. And here's to the return of Memphis football, which is suddenly the most fun team in the neighborhood.

Familiar names will be seen all over college football in 2017

As it happens, Miami football players Scott Patchan and Vincent Testaverde took the same geography class their first semester on campus. After class wrapped one day, professor Thomas Boswell called them both down.

"I recognize you two," he told them. "You're spitting images of your dads."

Patchan and Testaverde had heard stories about their dads their entire lives, but the vast majority centered around what made their fathers famous: football exploits at a time when Miami began its rise as a national power. Vinny Testaverde won the Heisman Trophy at Miami and became the No. 1 overall pick in the 1987 NFL draft; Matt Patchan blocked for him on the offensive line.

Now the two younger Miami football players stood listening to stories about what their dads were like inside the classroom, insight they never would have gotten had they been anywhere else.

"I have a lot of teachers at Miami that have tenure and taught my dad. It's very funny," Scott Patchan said recently. "Apparently, my dad was very smart in the way he could retain information. That's cool to understand. I'm the same way."

That experience is not exclusive to Patchan and Testaverde. Four players currently on the Miami roster have fathers who starred with the Hurricanes, all during the team's championship run in the 1980s. ESPN 300 prospect Al Blades Jr., whose late father, Al Sr., and two uncles played at Miami, recently committed to sign in the Class of 2018.

Many other legacy players across the country have also chosen to play where their fathers did, highlighted in recent years by Christian McCaffrey, Barry J. Sanders and Marlon Humphrey.

The list is long, and the questions the players get are always the same. Rather than feel any pressure to match or surpass what their fathers did, the seven players interviewed for this piece described a sense of love, tradition and familiarity, as well as the idea that the place where Dad set his footsteps is the only place that feels like home.

"Why are they saying my name, dad?"

Every player whose father played big-time football has an a-ha moment when he realizes his dad is more than just ... Dad. For Miami tight end Michael Irvin II, the moment happened when he was a youngster, when he was in the car with his NFL Hall of Fame father.

"We were driving, and he had a Mercedes. He had the top down, and people were screaming, 'Michael! Michael! Michael!' And I asked him, 'Why are they saying my name, dad?' And he said, 'You're a superstar!'"

When young Michael got home and relayed the story to his mother, she broke the news to him.

"They were saying your dad's name," she told him.

Puzzled, Michael asked why. "Your dad is a famous football player."

Kirk Johnson and Collin Johnson knew that their dad, Johnnie, played football at Texas in the late 1970s. But they did not realize what a remarkable player he was until 2007, when Johnnie took his family with him to New York to attend the College Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

"Seeing the way my dad was treated and seeing his Hall of Fame plaque and hearing his name called out on the stage, it was unreal," Collin Johnson said. "That's when my eyes were opened, and I'm sure Kirk's and my whole family as well."

At a banquet that weekend, then-Texas coach Mack Brown made an even bigger impression. As Johnnie Johnson recalls it, Brown told the audience, "I want you to know that all three of the Johnson kids have standing scholarship offers to the University of Texas, and they can play any sport they want to play." That included daughter Camille.

"I can't tell you the impact he had on our family," Johnnie Johnson said. "Those comments Coach Brown made in that public setting, that planted a seed."

But he also knew his children had to work for those scholarships, and he continued to teach them the intangibles that he said make athletes successful.

Kirk Johnson ended up a four-star running back in the Class of 2015. Collin Johnson was rated an ESPN 300 receiver in the Class of 2016. This fall, Camille will join her brothers at Texas as a javelin thrower on the track and field team.

"It's just something in our blood"

Kirk Johnson's favorite color is orange. It has been that way since he was 3 years old.

Although they might not have recognized their dads as famous football players until they got older, with television sets tuned to their fathers' alma maters on Saturdays, these legacy players knew exactly where their loyalties stood at an early age.

"Ever since I really knew what football was, I always wanted to put on burnt orange and play for Texas," Kirk Johnson said.

That idea grew after Texas won the national championship in 2005.

"When they won the national championship, we were jumping all over the living room," Collin Johnson said. "Me and Kirk instantly envisioned ourselves playing on that stage at UT."

For Tennessee defensive back Todd Kelly Jr., memories of watching the Volunteers on Saturdays remain vivid. His father played at Tennessee in the early 1990s and settled down in the Knoxville area. The family had season tickets, so until Kelly became a recruit, he had been to every Tennessee home game.

As one of the top prospects in the nation in the Class of 2014, he took multiple official visits to other campuses, including Alabama, Florida and Georgia. But Todd Jr. couldn't find a better place than the one in his backyard. He has three teammates whose fathers also played at Tennessee.

"With the Kelly Jr. on the back of my jersey, it meant a lot to my family, my friends," Todd Jr. said. "Playing for Tennessee each and every year, I know how much it means because I used to sit on the couch and watch the boys playing every Saturday. Just to know there are kids looking up to me like I looked up to the former players means a lot, and that's why I work hard for Tennessee every day."

Al Blades Jr. lost his father in a car accident when he was 3 years old, but there was no way he would grow up without Miami in his life. Not only did his uncles Bennie and Brian play at Miami, but his large, extended family also remains in South Florida and continues to root on the Canes.

"It's just something in our blood, not something they forced down your throat," Al Jr. said. "Whenever a UM game was on, you were just there watching it. You don't really realize that you're being groomed to become a diehard Cane, but at the end of the day, that's what it becomes."

"... the odds are against players that go to their dad's school"

Family names are impossible to ignore, and that becomes harder for legacy players as they begin playing football and get recruited. Imagine the pressure when outsiders automatically expect you to be a carbon copy of your famous parent.

"Of course, there was a lot of extra pressure," Michael Irvin II said. "I would have liked to have gone and seen a bunch more places, but some of them didn't offer me because they thought, 'Oh, he's going to Miami.' Everybody was telling me, 'Oh, we can't wait to see you at Miami.'"

Patrick Bethel had a similar experience when he started the recruiting process. He piled up offers from Alabama, Tennessee, Clemson and dozens of others as an ESPN 300 defensive line prospect, but he would always hear: "You're going to Miami. Your dad went there."

Randy Bethel, who won national championships with Miami in 1987 and 1989, tried to stay out of his son's recruitment process. Patrick eventually chose his father's alma mater, but he insists that the decision was his alone.

"I almost got tired of hearing it. I was like, 'Dude, you're not in my head. You don't know what's going on.' Yeah, I knew he went here. It was very cool. He's got his two rings. He knows what it takes, but it's been both a blessing and a curse in terms of people bringing it up all the time. I don't know why it's so hard for people to believe it, but it wasn't much of a factor because I'm my own person."

Football in dark ages over homophobia

Football risks "being left in the dark ages" unless more is done to tackle homophobia in the game, ex-Wales rugby star Gareth Thomas has said.

Thomas came out as gay in 2009 after hiding his sexuality for years.

He admitted it almost drove him to suicide after his wife Jemma left him when he told her the truth.

Thomas said unless homophobia in football was "policed as stringently as racism is policed, then it will always be a problem".

Thursday marks 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality between men aged 21 and over in England and Wales.

The former Cardiff Blues player looked at the issue in a documentary for BBC Wales.

There have been no openly gay professional footballers in the top four divisions since former Norwich striker Justin Fashanu in 1990, who killed himself in 1998.

Thomas spoke to Amal Fashanu, Justin's niece, who made a documentary on the issue in 2012.

"In that five years, from talking to her, absolutely nothing has changed," he said.

A spokesman for the FA said the governing body was "committed to tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in football at every level of the game".

Wales' governing body - the FAW - has been asked for comment.

In recent years, ex-Aston Villa midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger and former Leeds United and United States player Robbie Rogers have revealed they are gay.

Hitzlsperger had retired and Rogers plays in the US' Major League Soccer.

In 2015, 2% of UK men identified as gay or bisexual but none of the approximately 5,000 professional footballers have publicly come out.

Thomas said they would be "walking into the unknown" as governing bodies had not done enough "to create an environment for a player to feel like he can be himself".

While great efforts have been made to tackle racism, Thomas said homophobia was not treated as seriously.

He spoke to a steward who had thrown out a fan for using racist language and asked him if he would have done the same had he used a gay slur.

"His honest answer, which is the truth of it, was very much the case he doubts it would have been," he said.

While those throughout the game have supported efforts to rid football of racism, Thomas said "you'll struggle to get a single player to openly talk about his support against homophobia because he stands the backlash of guilt by association.

"It does feel like football is not ready for it. If a player is ready it could be a great success or it could be a great disaster.

"I think they need reassurance that everything will be OK and they'll be judged on their footballing ability and not their sexuality."

The FA said it worked with leagues, LGBT clubs and campaign groups to sanction and educate perpetrators of abuse and encouraged "players to be themselves and support their teammates to do likewise".

Thomas said while there was "no excuse" for homophobic language, he thought some fans singing anti-gay chants felt "they can be somebody who, on the outside of that stadium, would be somebody that they might look down their nose at".

He believes change must come from the top of the game: "Unless football wants to be left behind in the dark ages then it has to [improve].

"But until it's policed as stringently as racism is policed, then it will always be a problem."

Football on front foot to halt junior decline

A number of initiatives are being put in place to stop the drop in teenagers playing football in the South West.

On Wednesday, July 12 a meeting was held between senior and junior football stakeholders to address a decline in junior football, which has seen the number of teams from Year 7 to Year 11 in the South West Junior Football League drop from 51 teams in 2012 to 42.

The most alarming drop has been in the Year 11 competition, which has gone from 10 teams to just four.

South West Football League executive Shaun Quaife, one of the driving forces behind the meeting, said the attendance of more than 50 people showed there was concern for the sport in the region.

"The clubs as well as junior and senior associations are genuinely concerned," he said.

"There is a sense of urgency from the clubs that we really need to address this."

A number of plans and initiatives have already been put in place since the meeting, including having more footballs at training.

Each club is also set to appoint a coaching coordinator ahead of next season to support the junior coaches.

"There needs to be more support and up-skilling of our junior coaches," Quaife said.

"We need to provide more engaging training to keep them working on their football skills."

Quaife said only half the junior players made the transition to senior football.

He said the stakeholders were aiming to increase that to 70 per cent

"If you look at it in terms of a Statewide issue, well we are no worse off than any other competition, but we really want to address it," Quaife said.

"We have strong numbers coming from our Year 8 teams and we want to address this. We need to provide a more engaging package so they stay in football."

Another meeting is set to be held in August.