1. Although many Michigan State fans are probably concerned about the health of Gary Harris after he sprained his right ankle in a pick-up game with teammates that will keep him out for four to eight weeks based on what we have heard it does not appear to be a major injury. Of course we take every prediction of time to return from an ankle injury with a grain of salt since it can take several days to truly understand the extent of injury so the four- to eight-week timetable should be considered a guess at best. Some Spartan fans are probably also concerned with Harris’ tendency to get injured since he was plagued by a shoulder injury that he managed to play through while averaging 12.9 points per game on his way to Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. However the injuries appear to be unrelated so it seems that Harris is just unlucky rather than injury-prone.
2. High school basketball recruiting has grown from a very specialized niche to a thriving industry, but few if any individuals cover it as well as Dave Telep does. So we were not shocked when the San Antonio Spurs decided to hire him to be part of their scouting department. We are still unsure what Telep’s specific role will be (given the Spurs recent history we suspect he will need to keep his passport handy), but we have no doubt given his and the team’s track record that he will be a success in his new job. We will miss having his analysis open to the public, but we wish him the best of luck.
3. Unlike Telep and a group of other individuals we are by no means recruiting experts (particularly this early in the year) so we were a little surprised to see the media reaction to Trevon Bluiett‘s commitment to UCLA. Bluiett, who is ranked #41 overall in this year’s senior class, committed to UCLA after they hired his high school coach. We discussed this topic almost five years ago with Michael Beasley, a much more accomplished player than Bluiett, so we are somewhat surprised to see a school with UCLA’s reputation needing to resort to such tactics (admittedly within the rules) to get someone so lightly regarded. There are also rumors that Bluiett might be the first domino in a series of recruits that will commit to UCLA now. If that is the case, we understand the package deal, but for right now we remain skeptical about its impact on the national scene.
4. Over the past year we have read plenty of analysts give their opinions on the issue of whether college athletes should be provided with monetary compensation beyond their current athletic scholarships. Most of these opinions have been voiced in Twitter rants or occasionally in the op-ed section with the primary focus being the huge TV contracts being awarded as well as the high salaries of coaches and administrators. What we have not seen (at least in mainstream media) is an economic analysis that is as thorough as what Jeffrey Dorfman provided to Forbes. Now you can take issue with the headline number of $125,000, which is admittedly back-of-the-envelope and something we would have never included if we published the article, but we agree with a lot of his underlying assertions regarding the difficulties of enacting such a system. Whether or not you agree with those assertions, the article should still illustrate why it will be a long time before any significant change is made.
5. When we saw the news release that ESPN and Time Warner Cable had reached a deal allowing their customers in Texas to watch the Longhorn Network our first reaction was surprise that a deal had not already been reached. We are not sure how many people actually get Longhorn Network, but given the controversy surrounding its launch we are a little surprised that it has not even caught on locally. While most schools will stick with the conference contracts the difficulties of a network featuring the most profitable college brand in the country underscores some issues networks may have launching hyperlocal channels.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 at 5:45 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: dave telep, Gary Harris, michigan state, trevon bluiett, ucla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.