Football Gazette's Small College Football Blog

Don Hansen's Football Gazette Blog of information, comments, notes, and tidebits on Small College Football. NCAA 1-AA & Mid Major, Division II & Mid Major, Division III, NAIA, and NCCAA

Monday, July 17, 2006

News and notes from around college football for July 17, 2006

The National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame, Inc.

Monday's Chalktalk

News and notes from around college football for July 17, 2006

http://www.footballfoundation.com/news.php?id=915

Coaches Connect with the Community as Offseason Draws to a Close




Despite preseason camp opening in just three short weeks, coaching staffs from across college football are taking time away from their last minute preparations to connect with members of their local communities. Coach John L. Smith and his staff from Michigan State will host a youth football clinic on campus on August 12, while Miami (OH) head coach Shane Montgomery and numerous other RedHawks coaches are set to do the same this coming Sunday. Vanderbilt's annual "Commodores in the Community", where fans have the opportunity to meet Coach Bobby Johnson and several players from the Commodore football team, will kickoff with a meet-and-greet in Nashville this Friday. Ladies Football Clinics are scheduled at California, Clemson and Baylor, while Tulsa opened their annual Football 101 Clinic to both men and women this year. Annual Fan Day festivities at Auburn, taking place on August 5 this year, provide fans the opportunity to meet head coach Tommy Tuberville and receive autographs from members of the Tigers football team. Baylor head coach Guy Morriss will speak to a group of Bears supporters in Austin, Texas, on July 31 as part of a three-city tour during which the coach will preview the upcoming season. Mark Richt's summer-long, eight-city "Dawg Days" speaking circuit positioned him in front of hundreds of University of Georgia supporters across Georgia and north Florida. And at the Triangle Pigskin Preview in Durham this Thursday, coaches Chuck Amato (North Carolina State), Rod Broadway (North Carolina Central), John Bunting (UNC) and Ted Roof (Duke) will talk football along Tobacco Road to hundreds of guests at an event annually hosted by the National Football Foundation's Triangle Chapter.



Arizona State QB Pays Tribute to Teammate with Jersey Switch



This past March, a bullet pierced Arizona State recruit Angelo Richardson's lungs and ribs, paralyzing him and ending his major college football career before it could ever begin. Richardson had planned to join Sun Devil quarterback and former high school teammate Sam Keller in Tempe for the 2006 season. But the bullet left Richardson with no feeling below his waist, and as Keller prepared for his senior year atop the Sun Devils preseason depth chart in competition with redshirt sophomore Rudy Carpenter for the starting job, he decided to honor the request of his fallen tammate and switch from his familiar #9 jersey number to #2 this year. Keller jumped at the opportunity to wear #2 when Richardson asked him to sport his old jersey number. "I thought about what I could do for him, because he wasn't going to have much done for him," said Keller, who threw for 2,165 yards and 20 touchdowns in just seven games last season. "I thought about what I could do for him, for my friend, that would mean something." The Sun Devils open preseason camp on August 4 and begin their season on August 31 with a home game against Northern Arizona.



Two-Minute Drill



DeAngelo Williams, the star senior tailback from Memphis last season, picked up co-Male Athlete of the Year honors from Conference USA last week... Texas quarterback Vince Young captured the Big 12 Conference Male Athlete of the Year Award last week... Brown's Nick Hartigan, a finalist for the 2005 Draddy Trophy presented by HealthSouth, received the Fritz Pollard Award as the Ivy League male varsity athlete of the year...



Eighty-eight players from the Penn State football team raised more than $53,000 in contributions to benefit the Kidney Cancer Association through their fourth annual "Penn State Lift for Life" event last week... Forty-two freshmen varsity football players, including seven each from Florida, LSU, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, earned a spot on the Southeast Conference's 2005-06 Freshman Honor Roll for achieving at least a 3.0 GPA while completing a minimum of 24 credit hours... Georgia Tech wide receiver James Johnson joined a group of other Yellow Jacket student-athletes to volunteer with children afflicted by cancer at Camp Sunshine...



Temple and UConn agreed to a four-game series to start in 2007... Miami (OH) and Northern Illinois moved their midseason matchup this year back one day from October 7 to October 8... The GMAC Bowl rescheduled their annual postseason game from December 21 to January 7...



1977 College Football Hall of Fame inductee Gale Sayers talked football and life experiences with a group of National Football Foundation Chicago Metro Chapter scholar-athletes during a question-and-answer session on July 10... Houston established a Heisman Trophy promotional website for quarterback Kevin Kolb, the I-A active leader in completions, passing yards and total offense... The July 18 episode of NBC's "Fear Factor" reality show will feature former Naval Academy football team captain Lt. Gervy Alota, who played for the Midshipman from 1995-1998... Clemson will honor their fans on August 13 in Memorial Stadium with their annual Fan Appreciation Day...



Kansas State's ongoing construction projects on the Vanier Football Complex, which includes the installation of a new 23-foot by 61-foot video board, are scheduled to be completed in time for their season opener against Illinois State on September 2... Hughes Stadium, on the campus of Colorado State University, received a new FieldTurf artificial playing surface last week as part of minor renovations being made to the 39-year-old stadium this offseason... Now through August 1, fans can vote for the greatest game ever played at NC State's Carter-Finley Stadium, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this season, by logging on to gopack.com...



Former Stanford fullback Ernie Nevers, a 1951 inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame, will posthumously receive induction into the U.S. Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame on July 28 in Quantico... Bruce Smith, the former Virginia Tech star who is one of 15 members set for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame this December 5, will be honored as part of the 2006 class of inductees into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame on October 26... Former Nebraska standout Rich Glover, a 1995 inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame, will be part of the inaugural class inducted into the Jersey City (N.J.) Hall of Fame on September 28...



Rice University reached an agreement with new radio partner KKDL 1160 AM to expand the broadcast of Owl football games into the Dallas market this season... Army athletics partnered with XOS Technologies to launch a new website to cover and promote Black Knights athletics last week... The University of Tennessee athletics department awarded a ten-year multimedia contract to Host Communications that includes enhancements to the operational video board at Neyland Stadium...



Louisville signed head coach Bobby Petrino to a ten-year contract that locks the Cardinals coach up through the 2015 season... Rice added longtime Kansas State assistant coach Michael Smith as their new running backs coach... Purdue named Joe Muller their new senior associate athletics director for external relations... Brian Hardin accepted a position with Notre Dame as their new director of football media relations... Former Cincinnati associate AD Brian Teter was named the new athletics director at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi... Delaware added Sandy Iverson and Charles "Chip" Armbruster to their athletics administration staff.



Schedule Spotlight: Independents


Team - Date - First Opponent (Home/Away)



Army - September 2 - Arkansas State (A)

Navy - September 2 - East Carolina (H)

Notre Dame - September 2 - Georgia Tech (A)





With 120 chapters and 12,000 members nationwide, The National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame, a non-profit educational organization, runs programs designed to use the power of amateur football in developing scholarship, citizenship and athletic achievement in young people. The NFF presents the MacArthur Trophy, the Draddy Trophy presented by HealthSouth and releases the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Standings. NFF programs include the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., Play It Smart, the NFF Center for Youth Development Through Sport at Springfield College (Mass.), the NFL-NFF Coaching Academy, and scholarships of over $1 million for college and high school scholar-athletes.

For more information, please visit www.footballfoundation.org


NFF Contacts

Phil Marwill.......................Director of Communications

Chris Caputo.....................Communications Assistant

22 Maple Avenue

Morristown, NJ 07960

973.829.1933 (phone)

www.footballfoundation.org