Hence, the inbox is bulging with notes to be notated and with the Browns playing on that dreaded Thursday night, I decided to work on this today.
This edition is VERY the Athletic heavy with the first five articles, so if you aren't a subscriber I apologize and if you aren't and you want to be-let me know as I can send you a link and add TRS twenty-five dollars in Amazon cash!
The lovely picture above of Bill Belichick in those oh so nineties NFL Properties clothing items, reminded me of the Athletic article that looked back on Belichick's Cleveland tenure and how it ended.
It was written by a Boston based reporter and such has a mild-Belichick slant, but it still is a good article as the reporter talked to several people, including players that played in Cleveland during that period.
The fallacy is that Belichick in Cleveland was going to be an eventual success and I'm not sure that would be the case.
The Browns had one winning season in his five seasons there, made one playoff appearance with one win and Belichick's draft record really wasn't all that great.
Eric Turner was a hard hitter that saw his career and life ended far too soon and Steve Everitt was a solid center, but not a perennial Pro Bowler and they were the best first-round picks by Belichick.
Tommy Vardell, Antonio Langham, Derrick Alexander, and Craig Powell were the other first-rounders and disappointed as they ranged from busts to average players that didn't live up to what you expect from your first-round picks.
One other great note from the article discusses the release of Bernie Kosar and notes the immobility of Kosar with his pass accuracy, resembling the skills of the QB that Belichick kept in New England (Tom Brady), while in Cleveland, Belichick kept the physically talented, yet disappointing Vinny Testaverde, while with the Patriots Belichick moved the similar Drew Bledsoe to Buffalo.
Perhaps the case might be made that without the failures in Cleveland, the successes of the New England Patriots may not have been possible?
The Athletic writes of the football program's growth and the surrounding area at Appalachian State with its effects on the town of Boone, North Carolina.
The article is essentially a history of the Mountaineers football program with discussions with the various coaches at Appalachian State that traces back to and includes Mack Brown in the 1980s.
I found one segment interesting with the topography of Boone and how that has to figure in with every expansion and improvement for their athlete facilities as well as their rivalry with Georgia Southern, who has been the only team to defeat Fred Landucci's favorite team in the last two seasons.
This one from the Athletic writes the story of how Gonzaga has built itself a perennial power that is more than the dominant team in a mid-major conference, it is one of the top programs in the country.
The Gonzaga story is an amazing one of how a program can be sustained without football income and without power five (and Big East basketball) attention and cash.
Mark Few's achievements of completing and exceeding what Dan Monson started in Spokane is arguably the long term (I.E. not counting a one season miracle ) underdog story of the last 50 years in college basketball.
Our final piece from the Athletic is an oral history of Jake Plummer's years at Arizona State.
The Plummer years ended seconds away from a possible national title in Tempe, had Ohio State not pulled out the Rose Bowl in 1997 over the Sun Devils.
The term that his teammates used that seemed like described Plummer best was "Calmly Intense" and some of these stories bear this out.
I've always liked the form of oral histories because it tends to allow the subjects to speak for themselves, rather than be filtered through the lens of the writer.
ESPN ends our run of The Athletic links with a look at the newest Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach in Lindsay Gottlieb, who the team hired from her head coaching position at California.
As someone that doesn't follow women's college basketball closely, I didn't know very much about Gottlieb's background but reading this article I found her mix of old school basketball with the new wave from the analytical side very intriguing.
I also found it interesting that she was a seldom-used player at Brown in her college playing days and worked her way through the maze to move to the NBA.
After reading this article and with the massive amount of respect that I have for John Beilein and his knowledge of the game, I'll state this- I wouldn't be against placing a small wager that when John Beilein retires, Lindsay Gottlieb will be the next coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
We wrap with this note from Fred Landucci, who sends this article from Baseball America's Joe Sheehan.
Sheehan's column is entitled "How to lose a baseball fan in four months" and discusses teams drop in attendance and uses it as a parallel between teams that have attempted to compete and those that have moved their stars along and have slammed that proverbial window of attempting to compete for playoff positions shut.
It's interesting to see how that is working out for the various clubs and how the teams that decided to cash in their stars saw an attendance decrease.
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